


Sorrow Guides My Path

by MartyrJoan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angry Lavellan (Dragon Age), Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, City Elf Inquisitor, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Temple of Mythal (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2020-06-02 17:37:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 52,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19446334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MartyrJoan/pseuds/MartyrJoan
Summary: Inquisitor Arravir Lavellan has always fought against being a holy symbol for humans and everything that means, while still trying to support her people. It has gained her a number of enemies and doubters.Now, she travels to the Arbor Wilds, and without hesitation drinks from the sacred Well of Sorrows. All of the tensions of the past three years as Inquisitor come to a head as nearly everyone begins to question her choice.Reaching a breaking point, she isolates herself, even from the Commander she loves, and tries to determine how to continue forging her own path without sacrificing the ideals and the people she holds dear.





	1. The Crossing

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be long, and will likely be more of a character study than a ship study, though there will be Cullen content down the line! 
> 
> For now, the story begins during the long trip to the Arbor Wilds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant Inquisitor backstory: Arravir was born a city elf in the Denerim alienage (where she was friends with Tabris)! When she was eleven, her magic was discovered, and she had a violent clash with the Templars meant to collect her. She escaped and was wandering homeless for some time before being discovered and saved by Clan Lavellan.

Moving the armies of the Inquisition and its allies from the Frostbacks to the Arbor Wilds is a monumental - and very slow - task. They are split into many divisions in order to ultimately take different positions across the uncharted forests. And, more difficult than that is the fact that it is deep in the winter months (though, Arravir reasons to herself, most months in Ferelden feel like winter months) and the thick snow and icy paths slow down even the most practiced soldiers. 

The cold confronts Arravir with a barrage of unwanted memories: memories of being a lost child in the harsh winters of Ferelden, not yet found by Clan Lavellan, and not _wanting_ to be found by anyone at all. The cold had been something less than life itself, an emptiness that had worked its way methodically into the space between every bone in her small, malnourished body. Her throat had been raw and cracked. She had hidden in the haylofts of barns for days, unable to move much beyond that. When feeling particularly brave, she would light some of the hay on fire with a spark of her hands and sit with the breathing _,_ flickering _thing_ that was her magic. 

Now, nearly two decades later, she is a leader in a fight against an evil none of them truly understand. And the cold tries to work its way into her body the same way as it had then, weighing them down into its sleepy arms. Days are ended earlier than they would like, for fear of losing footing in the dark and being lost in the snow. Mounts are walked very slowly over frozen streams as they try to avoid overloading and cracking the ice. 

At one point, Arravir finds herself giving something of a pep talk to her own stubborn hart. His shaggy fur has collected fine icicles that slip from him as he gives a forceful shake of his massive head. He has paused suddenly right in front of a shallow but frozen-over river, white lines stretching out through the light blue of it.

“Is something wrong, Da’ghilana?” She asks, knowing the creature might sense something is wrong while the rest of them trodd along without fear. Pulling her coat tighter around her, she then reaches a gloved hand over the leather saddle and onto his back, feeling the powerful muscles above his shoulders clenching and unclenching. Her fingers are numb from cold despite the warmth of the magic that beats through her veins, and yet she is comforted by the feeling of her hart’s strength, so familiar to her now after these long years together.  
  
Looking up, she scans the other side of the river, some seventy feet across. While it is the widest stream they have crossed yet, it is not too unbearable of a distance, and the snow is falling still, so it is unlikely the ice has melted to any degree that might make it unsustainable for crossing. But…

Da’ghilana paws the ground and heaves his head to the side again, his antlers nearly grazing her as he bucks suddenly back.

“Hey! Watch it,” she says, giving him a firm pat between his shoulder blades. Her hand travels up his thick neck and towards the softer fur of his head and she scratches the sensitive skin there. Head leaning back instinctively, Da’ghilana huffs a half-frustrated, half-content breath into the air, and she watches the fog of it scatter into the early afternoon lit by a sun half-shying away.

“Inquisitor,” Cassandra calls from behind her, “Is there something wrong?” Not all of her companions are with her, as many have divided themselves among the various groups marching forth, but she has kept a few of them beside her. And, at her own order, she always leads the charge. 

Her choice mattered little, however, since before parting with a team of her scouts, Leliana had made a sage remark that such actions may be necessary anyway for morale of the troops, to see the Inquisitor _literally_ leading them into battle, bold and without hesitation. It had been one of the few moments where it had felt obvious that her Spymaster had begun her career as a bard, and yet the lyrical words had brought no comfort to her. They had left Skyhold days before, but the words itched at her still, as if her under armor clothing had ridden up and the chainmail now rubbed raw against her skin. 

Arravir turns around on the saddle, careful not to clench the stirrups into Da’ghilana’s side and meets the Seeker’s eyes. “I’m not sure. Da’ghilana does not want to cross, but…”

“That hart has always had a mind of his own, Inquisitor. I don’t know why you still choose to ride with him.”

Da’ghilana exhales sharply again, as if he had understood Cassandra’s words.

“We understand each other,” Arravir says simply, and faces forward again. “Alright, Ghi, let’s try one step. If not, we will find another way.”

She looks down at the smoothed-over rocks she can still see looming beneath the ice, and presses her feet into her hart’s sides, urging him to move.

He does not.

Arravir can feel Cassandra, Dorian, Cole and more than a dozen other troops’ eyes all on her as she presses her feet into Da’ghilana’s sides again. He paws the ground again before placing his front hooves on the ice and then, seemingly without reason, backs up again, nearly causing them to lurch into Cassandra’s raven-colored horse.

She pauses, looking at the spider-web striations reaching out into the ice again, and thinks of Leliana’s words, thinks of how much she hates being a symbol, being something _holy_ to these humans. But, regardless of how she feels, some part of them -- whether it be their faith or their very lives -- is in her trembling hands.

“We’re going a different way, taking the longer route,” she says suddenly, pulling on the bridle to guide Da’ghilana through a sharp turn that takes them further up the bank. Raising her voice into her now-practiced one of authority, she calls “We’re taking no chances on thin ice today.”

She hears Dorian from somewhere behind her yell up, sounding less grumpy than he has in _weeks_ due to the snow, “You know, that _might_ be the best decision you’ve ever made in this whole club of yours!”

Then, the voice of one of the soldiers cuts in, a man with the thick accent of a rural Fereldan. “Inquisitor, it don’t look that thin! I grew up ‘round here, promise I know what dodgy ice looks like. It’ll be faster, let’s just _go!”_

There are a couple inaudible words that she can only assume are of agreement until the soldier says, “I bet I could do it, no problem! What are you lot _waiting_ for? Buncha cowards. We’ll lose time because her mount is scared? I could _do it_! And my bleedin’ horse would be fine with it, too.”  
  
Before Arravir can reply, Cassandra’s voice cuts across sharply, “The Inquisitor has made her decision. Are you speaking proudly of insubordination, or are you simply an _idiot?_ ”

“I don’t believe the two things are mutually exclusive in this case,” Dorian muses.

“Neither, I’m makin’ a _point!_ ” the man says proudly. There’s a clatter of hooves then as Cassandra pulls back, and then the soldier says nothing, just mumbles something none of them make out. Cassandra makes a noise of disgust.

Arravir almost smiles as she clicks her tongue, encouraging the hart to a trot once they reach flatter ground, and they follow closely beside the river as it curves through the frozen valleys of Southern Ferelden. 

The rest of the day passes without incident and without any encounters with hostiles -- no red templars, no bandits, not even wolves. They set up camp in a clearing of near-barren trees, not too far even now from the river. 

As Arravir sits on a log in front of the crackling fire that she had cast -- in full view of the soldiers who did not visibly flinch at her magic, and with proper kindling rather than stolen hay, the disobedient soldier from earlier approaches, standing nervously on the other side of the dancing flames.

She looks up from the report she had been writing and copying to send to the other troops, updating them on the day’s progress, and looks at him silently but expectantly. The man is pale, especially so in the bright light, and fidgets from foot to foot. He steps closer to her, pauses, and then pulls his wool-lined hat off, exposing his bare head to the freezing night air. He has short, mousy hair, and a wide frame that he looks like he is still trying to grow into. He is so _young._

“Are you going to sit?” She asks curiously, trying not to edge impatience into her tone.

“Um...May I, ma’am?” He hesitates.

“I do not own the fireside,” Arravir remarks.

“Right,” he nods, staring at the fire now. He moves then, without looking away from the fire where a log splits and spits sparks into the blackness. Sitting himself on another log, he perches awkwardly, hands still fidgeting with his cap. “I’ve just had a talk with Lady Pentaghast, and I think it’s best that I...apologize. So, I’m sorry, Inquisitor.”

“For?” Arravir asks. She knows _what for,_ but she wants the man to say it. 

He seems confused by that. “For what I said today, about crossing the river. It was out of line.”

Arravir levels her gaze at him, letting the quill she was writing with roll down her legs and rest on her lap. Crossing her arms, she says, “What is your name?”

He fidgets, exhaling deeply, breath starkly visible before him. “Reg, ma’am. Short for Reginald Sanders.” A thought seems to dawn on his face as he grows more pale. “You’re not going to report me to Commander Cullen, are you? I--”

“No, Reg,” she says calmly, with the barest trace of a laugh. “I just wanted to know.” She sobers instantly. “You called us cowards earlier. Be honest: is that your opinion of me?”

“No, ma’am!” Reg says quickly. “Was a stupid thing of me to say. I was just frustrated, is all. I’m itchin’ for battle ‘s all, and I don’t like anything slowing us down, ‘specially something I’ve done so many times before.”

It is Arravir’s turn to take a deep breath. She looks briefly towards the trees, towards the snow that almost glows in the moonlight. She wonders how many more nights like this will pass before they have reached that strange and foreign forest where they will find what Corypheus seeks. She understands that drive to be _doing_ something, that restlessness. It has controlled much of her life, and has dominated her for the nearly three years it has been since she first woke up with a mangled hand in the ashes of the Conclave. 

Seeming to be uneasy with the silence, Reg adds suddenly, “It’s just maddening to me, not knowing if we could have crossed alright back then, and how much time that’d save us, you know?”

That urges her to speech, the words almost come tumbling out, but she is still sitting so still. “Yes, we will never know if the other path would have worked. But we will also never know if one of us would have fallen through. We will never have to know if we would lose a soldier -- or their legs or their arms -- senselessly to frostbite.”

Arravir leans forward and looks at Reg directly in his eyes. They are hazel and wide eyed in the flickering light. “That is the choice I made today, Reg, even if it took us off route. I am not a coward. _I am keeping my people safe._ ”

Reg lowers his gaze, almost shameful. “Well, I can respect that. Me parents had a friend who lost both his legs, knees down, during the Blight. Kept saying for months he could still feel the pain as if his legs were still hangin’ there. He’s a good guy, but sweet Andraste, I can’t say I want to be like him, Inquisitor.” There is an odd tone to the last part of his words, as if he is grasping for humor but could not quite wrap his words around it, as if it is just one branch beyond his reach. “Thank you, then. And...Can I ask something more?”  
  
Arravir pauses, mind reeling with images of all the elves in the alienage she knew as a young girl, all the people whose limbs had been cut or mangled working in the docks or some human's remodelling of their estate. Her father had always walked with a limp. She could no longer remember the story.

Finally she speaks. “You may.”

  
Reg hesitates. “How’d you decide all that based on your hart, though? I’d call me horse a lazy ass if he tried somethin’ like that.”

A pang strikes her in the chest, and she uncrosses her arms. It is one of those occasional moments when she realizes how alone she is in the Inquisition, how _much_ she misses Clan Lavellan, and how much she fears she will never be understood.

“My People have a different respect for our animals. We work together, we do not own them. Da’ghilana -- my hart -- and I are the same way. He is...a _difficult_ mount, but he is dependable. And even if I did completely believe that the ice was safe to cross, I would not force him to. The Dalish don’t do that. We want our animals to trust us.”

Reg nods thoughtfully. “Alright, then. Think I get it. Wouldn’t have the same trust in me own horse, but it would be nice to, actually.” He gives a breathy half-laugh. 

Arravir stows the report in her bag then, carefully putting the quill and her half-frozen ink in their own pouch as well. There are some other troops lingering nearby who will take first watch and attend to the fire, she knows. “I am glad you talked with me, Reg.”

She stands then, and notices him hovering between standing and sitting, unsure of what to do with himself. He puts his cap back on. 

Arravir stares into the heart of the flames, contemplating his questions and odd statements. She wishes she could dissipate every snide comment made at her expense over the past three years into the cloudless night. Then, she shakes her head, as if dismissing the thought. There is no use lingering on what cannot be changed, she reminds herself.

“There is one more thing, however,” Arravir says evenly, not moving her gaze from the dancing flames that warmly light the brown of her skin, the reddish highlights in her dark hair, and the vallaslin that climbs across her resolved expression. 

“One of these days, you shemlen are going to have to decide whether or not you trust me.”


	2. The Foundation

They carry on as they cross from Ferelden into Orlais, and all the scouts announce it when they do, though Arravir doubts the land has any worry about which country it is. However, there are dramatic shifts in the world as their path points further east -- The closer they travel to the Arbor Wilds, the more the climate seems to turn around them, swirling into summer. The air is still sharp with its chill, but it is as if they witness the seasons flash forward in a matter of days. Frozen icicles begin to melt, dripping at first and then suddenly they are surrounded by small streams that cut through the rocky terrain as the world itself seems to shake off the winter.

She can’t explain it, none of them can, though the first of Leliana’s scouts and Morrigan had reported it of the area. The transition here is not a natural shift, and they know the rest of both countries are still deep in a landscape painted in bold grey strokes, the snow growing dirty under the plodding footsteps of laborers Orlesian and Fereldan alike. Much of the southern regions of Ferelden are still scarred from the Blight, new plants twisted or deformed slightly, something growing out of a dead land. The Blight never reached Orlais, but it is striking still that even this close to the border there is no sign of the poisoned land. Though they are still beyond the very outskirts of the Arbor Wilds...Arravir gets an odd feeling, as if it is whispered just behind her ears, that all of this is untouched. That no desolating force -- a Blight or winter -- could touch these lands. 

So, as they move in a land that is not quite a tundra any longer, their movements are freer and they pick up their pace. However, Arravir finds that she is urged from both her Spymaster and her Ambassador to voyage to another division of their forces. And another one. And another one. All for diplomatic purposes. It is not altogether surprising: Josephine and Leliana had suggested the idea back at Skyhold, but Arravir had mainly brushed it aside, busy with plans and preparations of her own, determined to leave at the earliest possible moment.

Now, she recoils at the thought of being tossed around between these humans to take whatever meaning they want from her. 

Her first message she sends via one of Leliana’s ravens is scrawled in an impatient, angry script. It simply reads: _Why? - A.L_

Josephine’s response arrives almost too quickly, as if she had anticipated this resistance and scrawled the draft hours before:  
  
_Inquisitor,_ _  
__  
_ _Nothing we are doing here would be possible without our allies -- the ones that_ _you_ have gained. While it would be inspiring if all of these _people fell in line because they share the Inquisition’s vision, that simply is not true. While I understand your discomfort, it is the unavoidable truth that many of our allies have joined our noble cause because of you._

_It is a natural reaction to have in times of crisis, to need a symbol or a person to fall behind. You have been that for years now, and you have done it with admirable skill and grace, my friend. This push into the Arbor Wilds is our most ambitious move yet, and everyone knows it, but still, a reminder of hope and of power (which I mean, of course, you) can go a long way to inspire the courage we may all need to face this. As we get closer to the Wilds and Corypheus’ forces, this becomes more urgent._

_Please take time to consider this, and remember all the power that you yield. As always, I am proud to be a part of it._

_Yours,_ _  
_ _Josephine Montilyet_

Her signature is loopy and intricate as always, the lines perfect and level with each other on the blank parchment. It’s a small marvel she managed the perfection of it in these harsh conditions, especially when she hails from a warmer climate.  
  
At the bottom of the page, however, is a hastily scrawled addition. It is still neat, but evident that it was written in a hurry, and much later because the ink is a slightly different color.

_Leliana would like to remind you that, as your friends, we are able to limit the time you spend with the more “unpleasant” of our allies._

Arravir raises an eyebrow, somewhat amused, somewhat aggravated. It is the twilight hours, the sun not yet gone, but tossing up bouquets of colors, and she is standing by the tree where she has tied up Da’ghilana. Leaning against the hart, face half-buried in his thick winter coat, she sighs, lowering the letter to her side and closing her eyes. She knows Josephine and Leliana mean well, but she cannot think of a more aggravating task than being paraded around from troop to troop like some kind of holy artifact, some good luck token. 

_Good luck_ , she thinks, and without much thought she reaches up to the simple cord around her neck from which a single coin hangs. His coin. Arravir has never been one to believe in fate or luck or any of those abstracts, so she doubts the coin is truly lucky. But it meant something to Cullen, a small piece of home -- and maybe even of hope -- that he carried through it all.

Thumb running along the embossed shape on the shiny surface (she has cleaned it almost daily since he gave it to her months ago), eyes still closed, she supposes that she can understand the symbolism attached to things and people. But she hates that in all of this, she feels that she has been made more of a _thing_ than a _person._

And she fears that that fact alone might slow them down, might prioritize _appearances_ and _courtesies_ over actually tracking and stopping Corypheus. She had hoped that this kind of decorum had bled out on the floor of the Winter Palace. 

“I know that face,” a familiar voice says, and Arravir almost jolts away from her gentle stupor. Da’ghilana paws the ground, and her hand instantly goes to run over his shoulder, calming him. Dorian stands some five feet in front of her, looking tousled and disgruntled but somehow still impossibly handsome. There are only patches of snow in this stretch of land, and Dorian’s own sour demeanor has been thawing with the ice. “I don’t envy the person that expression is directed towards.”

“It’s not any one person,” she says, knowing she can be honest with him. “It’s...all of this. Has Cassandra told you what my current orders are?”

Dorian finds another tree to lean against, watching his feet to make sure he does not step in the clump of dirty snow at its base. “More or less. You know, she made it sound so _noble!_ You riding triumphant for a time at the head of every troop in the Inquisition, armor shining in the sunlight brilliant as a summer’s day, as if the Maker himself walks beside you.” He crosses his arms and continues, something of a smirk on his face now. “But based on the last two weeks’ travel through this damned landscape I have arrived at my own conclusion, and I am looking for the right Chantry sister to tell it to: The Maker has, in fact, abandoned us. That is what the South has taught me. You know that I had never seen snow before I came here? Kaffas, it’s much better in a wet nurse’s fairytales.”

“I think you’re aiming rather low, lethallin,” Arravir says, feeling oddly lighter, as she usually does in his presence. “Why wait to find a Chantry sister when the Right Hand of the last Divine is in this very camp?”

“Oho! Well, remember the pride of my countrymen -- Justinia was no Divine of mine,” Dorian pauses, still musing over what she had said. “I don’t think I would be so bold to insult our dear Cassandra while Varric is not around to divert her hostilities?”

“Fair point. I need you here,” she says rather bluntly, and despite the distance she can see the twinkle in her friend’s eyes. 

“I _am_ irreplaceable, so alas, I will watch my tongue for today.” His voice is suddenly much warmer, and, after a thoughtful pause, he clears his throat. “Do you know what else I thought about Cassandra’s description of your assignment?”

Arravir tilts her head slightly, wordlessly inviting him to continue.

“I thought, ‘Oh Arravir is going to _despise_ this.’”

“You’re right.” Arravir feels herself relax more, some tension leave her body as her shoulders slump slightly. Her hand grips the parchment of Josephine’s letter tighter as she ponders the whole situation. Then, she extends her arm to offer it to him. “I might do it anyway. Look at what Ambassador Montilyet just sent.” Even in private company, she feels herself referring to titles. It is what has always been most comfortable.

“You will have to walk that over here. I will not go within _hitting range_ of that vicious horned steed of yours.”

“Dorian,” she says seriously.

“ _What?_ Don’t you know that he hates me? He can’t stand anyone that isn’t you and you know it.”

Arravir sighs and, running her hand down the length of Da’ghilana once more. The hart had been busy trying to rub his other side against the other tree, flakes of its bark catching in his fur. Then, rolling her eyes, she walks to her friend and hands it to Dorian.She watches him skim it for a few moments, mouth twisting to one side unconsciously as he thinks. Then, he folds it and hands it back to her.

“Damn, she is rather good at her job, isn’t she? Silver-tongued Antivan. I think she could dazzle the Imperium, and believe me, we are very hard to _dazzle._ ” Dorian looks down at Arravir seriously then. “So, Inquisitor? Your verdict?”

Arravir sighs again. “I’ll do it. But I won’t be some smiling, quiet bauble to admire and parade around either.”

“Well if there is a parade,” Dorian says immediately, “those usually involve a procession of more than one -- two, if we’re counting Ghi, and I think we ought, because I feel as if he is _glaring_ at me right now.” 

Arravir skips past the theatrics, not doubting that Da’ghilana is watching to some capacity, but unsure if he is imagining trampling Dorian to death, as her friend seems to be implying. She realizes the unsaid offer he has placed before her, and she reaches a hand to lightly touch his upper arm, bulky under layers of coats. “Will you come with me?”

Dorian seems surprised at the contact, but does not push it away. “I do like watching you yell at Orlesians.”

Finally, Arravir smiles very gently. “Okay.” She nods hesitantly, and then again, stronger. “Let’s do it.”

* * *

They spend the next week stopping between regiments, making their path forward meander more than Arravir would like, but the weather continues to magically improve as the air begins to feel warm and alive again, humming with the ancient magic of the region. She is introduced to nobles, chevaliers, rural recruits and healers, a few templars to whom she extends no courtesies, and respected enchanters. Fereldan, Orlesian, Marchers, Antivans, Rivaini...all of them want to size her up, shake her hand, question her or thank her. Whether they subtly condescend to her or praise her, she knows the idea is all the same -- she is not a person in their eyes, but something to measure up to their private vision of their Maker. Many of them are kind, but she still feels their searching, desperate eyes placing hope and divinity on her shoulders. 

Arravir does not shy from distancing herself from the Andrastianism placed on her. She gets odd looks from nobles and Chantry sisters (who Dorian has already scandalized with his blaspheming words, as promised) when she refers to their god as “your Maker.” At every turn available, she reminds them that Corypheus is seeking the secrets of _her_ People, of their power and their knowledge and their secrets. Because she has gods and stories of her own.

Still, those rural villagers who enlisted when their villagers were torn apart in the mage-templar war, come to her with a kind of humility. Some of them bow to her. Some of them doubt her. But she remembers the ones who approach her cautiously, who tell stories of lost families or homes, their whole life stories. Some of them thank her, and it feels better than any noble’s practiced words of gratitude. She tries to remember their names. 

She seeks out the washers, the cooks, the smiths who came along to support the soldiers. They work hard and adapt to changing conditions and supplies, though many of them have never been on a battlefront before. 

And it does become a battlefront. Though they are not yet meeting the bulk of his forces, they have encounters with outliers -- possible scouts waiting to signal the Inquisition’s arrival - of Corypheus’ army. They all glow that haunting red, and, when Arravir sinks her spectral blade into their guts, she sees that their eyes were hollow long even before the life bleeds out of them.

It is hard work, but she is grateful for the reprieve from the forced diplomacy. She is grateful for her heart quickening to the fluid steps of conjuring a familiar spell, of twirling through the expanse with her staff between her hands. It is better than the forced smiles and sweaty palms of meeting after meeting. She does not enjoy killing, she never has, but she knows it is necessary and important. She is not a symbol when she is out there setting fire to monsters wearing polished armor -- she is a survivor, just as she always has been.

Still, she knows some troops have advanced towards the heart of the forests without her, that spies are already reporting about the elven ruins that lie dormant but in remarkable condition. She wants to see them all and to fight alongside her people, to be at the head of the offense.

At one Orlesian camp as night settles around them, Arravir paces impatiently besides the roost for the messenger birds, waiting to hear news from any of her advisors. Her hand absently plays with the coin about her neck as she allows her mind, for the first time in days, to wander to Cullen. She has not heard from him in days, and wonders if he has remembered to eat or sleep, as he often forgets when he is too focused on work. This, too, frustrates her, as she knows she could be fighting near him if she were not appeasing nobles who no doubt called her knife ear -- or worse -- behind her back. Cullen himself had said in his last, brief letter that he was glad his men were able to clear something of a path for her, so she would have more direct access to pursue Corypheus.

Arravir knows he meant well, and that he is reserving the final chase for her - which she appreciates - but she can’t help but wonder if part of him is trying to protect her, when she needs no protection. She shakes her head slightly, trying to banish the thought, knowing she is frustrated from the company she has kept today. So she stares into the cages and watches one of the birds gently slumbering with its head beneath its slightly extended wing. The firelight brings out hidden colors in the dark feathers that fan out ever so slightly. 

“My dear,” she hears Vivienne’s clipped, clean voice say, and the First Enchanter seems to glide her way towards Arravir. Somehow, her bright clothes are spotless despite the exertion of their journey. “You look troubled on the precipice of the most important battle of your career. What’s bothering you?”

Arravir hesitates, looking up at the taller woman. Vivienne has a cordiality that Arravir has spent years trying to read, and though they do not agree on all subjects, she has a lot of respect and admiration for the other woman. And, though often looking for any and all ties of loyalty or knowledge that could be advantageous, Vivienne is also one of the few members of her inner circle her constantly inquires about her well-being. Her advice is constructive rather than easy to hear, and Arravir appreciates that about her. 

So, she swallows, and says, “I am not anywhere near the precipice of that battle, Vivienne, because I am being used as a symbol for a god I do not believe in. I am tired and I am angry, and all of these people expect me to be their salvation.”

Vivienne does not interrupt, she truly listens. But her response is immediate as she places a hand delicately on her hip. “ Your anger is understandable, but you miss the point. It’s something I am well aware that you already know, but if you have forgotten, let me remind you: If they are going to make a symbol out of you, at least make it mean something. If they think you are going to be their salvation, by all means, _be it._ ”

“I’m no one’s symbol, Vivienne,” Arravir practically spits out, harsher than she means it to be. 

“I’m afraid that’s not yours to decide. But being their salvation? That is your choice. And so is _how.”_

Arravir wants to scream her throat bloody and raw, but she calms herself. She counts her breaths. And she considers Vivienne’s words. They are not the same mantra of _get used to it_ that she has been expecting -- and receiving -- from most humans. Vivienne is right, she realizes. They will always expect this of her, but _how_ she achieves this will always be in her control. It has been a long time since she heard those words articulated from someone other than herself. 

Arravir meets Vivienne’s eyes. “...I don’t know why I’m still having this conversation years later, but I still needed to hear that. Thank you. I think _salvation_ is a larger task than I can do, but when it comes to stopping Corypheus...I won’t fail.”

There is a smile in Vivienne’s dark eyes. “No, you won’t. Fight hard and proud, my dear.”

“I always do.” Arravir can almost feel herself standing taller.

“Absolutely, you do.” The moment lingers, warm and strengthening, before it is business talk again. “Now, I am afraid I must leave; I have yet to speak with one of the Orlesian captains, he’s an old friend, and it’s necessary he understands the value of his service, don’t you agree? Goodnight, Inquisitor.”

“Goodnight, Vivienne.”  
  
Arravir watches the First Enchanter go, almost waltzing as she makes her way about the thrown-together camp as if it is a grand hall in Val Royeaux. And she ponders the other woman’s words before bursting into motion herself, startling one of the birds that had been preening itself. She takes off her travel bag and digs for parchment and ink, ready to write using the side of the cage for support if she must.

_I can decide the how,_ she thinks, as she scribbles a note addressed hastily to Leliana and Josephine: “ _I will begin heading to the main camp tomorrow. Have been a political pawn long enough. If Celene is with you I’m sure she will be happy to see me. Don’t need to send reinforcements to meet us. Dorian and I can manage. -- A.L._ ”

She opens the cage and rouses one of the birds, speaking gently to it as she attaches the scroll to its small, scaly leg. How odd, how uncharacteristic of herself, she realizes, to sit around and wait for a letter instead of deciding her next path for herself. 

In the morning, she is woken by a messenger holding a thin slip of parchment. Surprisingly, Josephine does not object. 

“ _The battle has begun in outright, Inquisitor. Corypheus’ troops have shown their full numbers, and our combined forces are matching them blow for blow. Though it was not my intended next step for you, your presence will be welcome here. We are holding this camp steadily. Be careful. The journey may take several days with the red templars, and though I recognize your skill, I am going to reject your request to journey alone. Leliana has sent a small team of spies your way already._

_Safe travels, my friend._

_-Josephine Montilyet”_

* * *

It is a strange exhilaration to know what they are walking into. Arravir knows the stakes, but is glad she is not left waiting any longer. As she quickly dresses, she thinks of all the people who look to her and shudders to think how many have already bled out in these wilds, crimson mingling with the thick grasses and dispersing into the many streams that line the forest floor.

Then, she heads to the tent beside her to rouse Dorian and begin preparing their mounts for travel.

The next few days pass in a blur. They ride and fight longer and harder than before, resting little in order to maximize their travel. Dorian rarely complains, and she sees the seriousness of the fight settle on his brow, too as they scan the forests. They meet the scouts Josephine had mentioned after two days alone, and the whole group barely talks, but work efficiently together as they work their way northward in the forests.

The weather grows almost humid, and Dorian remarks that he could be back home -- except the templars here actually have _some_ skill.

Still, they tear through whatever red templars come their way. The lyrium seems to be eating away whole chunks of their flesh, sick and brownish red like an infected wound scabbing over. Arravir and Dorian say nothing, but she feels they both know, and are thinking of, that avoided future they had experienced when Alexius had warped time around them.

The trees grow taller, immeasurably huge and unidentifiable in species. And she feels as if she grows smaller and smaller in their shadows. Still, there is an odd familiarity to the area, deep in her bones. It is like she is staring at an old memory like a footprint on the beach and the tide has just come in. She knows it was there, knows it should mean something, but she cannot find the exact shape and feeling of it. 

As Morrigan had said, weeks ago now, the Arbor Wilds are filled with old elven magics. And Arravir knows that Morrigan, despite her knowledge, could not be feeling what she is now. 

* * *

It is four days after leaving the Orlesian camp that they reach the main camp. It is a sprawling stronghold, fiercely defended, and when they arrive deep into the night, it takes a few moments for the guards on watch to lower their weapons. Arravir removes the glove on her left hand, letting the Anchor’s bright green glow illuminate their faces, and one of the poor guards -- a young girl with a round face -- almost faints from shock. 

“Don’t announce I’m here quite yet,” Arravir says. Though it is late, she knows the camp is still largely active, because a war zone never sleeps. “Would one of you,” she addresses the scouts with her, “find Ambassador Montilyet, or Sister Leliana? And in the meantime, would you show me where my mount can rest?”

The guard who has been more steady is leveling their eyes against Da’ghilana, as if locked in a staring contest. Arravir rolls her eyes and says, “No, I’m not expecting you to lead him. I will do it. Just show me where.”

They nod wordlessly and guide them around the perimeter and towards a makeshift stable. The guard takes Dorian’s horse, who remarks about how he is going to find a tent and pass out immediately. The guard quickly attends to Dorian's horse and excuses himself, leaving Arravir in relative solitude to remove the riding equipment from Da’ghilana, which she is content to do. Brushing out the sweaty fur where the saddle had been, she breathes out the melody of an elven lullaby, and the hart makes a low sound of contentment. In the dimly lit area, she is able to forget the last few weeks for just a moment, listening to the constant sound of her hart’s breathing.

Then, as Arravir is taking the bit out of Da’ghilana’s mouth, one of the scouts calls out behind her, “Inquisitor!”

Practically cutting the scout off, Josephine’s voice cries out “Arravir!” She is registering her shock that the Ambassador is so willing to drop decorum in front of others when she is surprised further to find the other woman throwing her arms around her. Arravir hesitates, and then hugs Josephine back, confused by the thin, silk texture of her clothing before she realizes that the other woman is in her bedclothes. Over the ambassador’s shoulder, Arravir sees the scout salute her and take off into the shadows again, leaving the two women - gratefully - alone.

“I am so glad you arrived safely, the conditions have gotten dangerous. The healers are working to their limit now, there are many injured. But morale is _high,_ Inquisitor, and will no doubt improve with you here. The Empress has already gone to bed, but I am sure she will want to meet with you first thing in the morning. And then there is also the Duke of --”

“Josephine,” Arravir says calmly. Da’ghilana is snorting in annoyance behind her, chewing on the loose bit in his mouth. “It’s good to see you. But can I hear the list of nobility in the morning? I promise I will speak with them all.”

Josephine is slightly flustered, and pushes back a lock of her dark hair that is falling loose over her shoulders now, in a way Arravir has only seen a few times before. “Of course. I apologize. It’s...the nerves, I think.”

Arravir returns her attention to Da’ghilana and takes the rest of his headgear off, saying over her shoulder, “How are you feeling, Ambassador?” She means it seriously, knowing that Josephine had not been at Adamant and has seen little of war.

“I am...alright. There is enough to do to keep me busy. Do not worry for my sake, Arravir.” She makes a noise in the back of her throat that Arravir recognizes from countless meetings over the years signalling she is reigning herself in. “Do you need anything? We have plenty of food still, though it is of course salted to a _disgraceful_ degree in that horrible Fereldan attempt at preserving the meat.”

“I have been eating throughout the day to keep my energy up. I am fine, I assure you. Thank you.” Rubbing Da’ghilana’s bare back once more, she turns to Josephine again. “I think right now I would most like to rest, unless I am needed elsewhere. Is there any new information on what exactly Corypheus might be looking for?”

“He seems to be heading to an area North of here, but that is all that we know at the time, Inquisitor. We are hoping to get a better idea within the next few days, and then you will be able to lead your team after him.”

“Good. Keep me posted on anything you learn. Anything at all.”

“Of course. And I can lead you to a tent available to you. Unless --” Josephine stops still for a second. “Forgive me, Arravir, there have been so many important figures coming and going all day it is hard to keep track, I almost forgot to mention -- Commander Cullen is here! He often comes and goes from this camp, but he has been away fighting for days, and just returned a few hours ago to restock and get some of his men to healers. Knowing the stubbornness of that man, however --” Josephine rolls her eyes. “He will likely be leaving again first thing in the morning.”

Arravir nods fondly, knowing the man she is committed to. “Do you think he is already sleeping then?”

Josephine raises a disbelieving eyebrow. “Are we speaking of the same man?”

At that, Arravir can’t help but laugh. It turns into a yawn. “Would you take me to his tent? And, Josephine…” Somewhat sheepish and wanting to maintain their privacy, she adds, “Would you be able to personally wake us in the morning?” She knows him, and knows he had likely already asked a guard to wake him at sunrise. 

Josephine smiles knowingly. “Of course.”

* * *

When Arravir lifts the canvas flap and steps into Cullen’s tent, she is met with a warm glow of multiple candles. He is still in full armor, leaning over a table in a corner of the tent, reading through a thick stack of reports. Still, she can see the fatigue in his limbs, the way he seems to be concentrating _too hard_ because he is fighting off sleep. But he does not look up.

““Pardon me, Commander--” 

“Something new?” He asks quickly, cutting her off, but still not recognizing her voice.

“Just a request,” Arravir says tentatively.

“Yes?” 

“Can I stay the night with you?” Arravir can’t help the grin that passes over her features now.

“I-” Cullen turns quickly, confused, and then, in a moment, everything about him softens. “Maker, it’s good to see you.”

Arravir steps forward into his already outstretched arms, and he holds her tightly. Some of the metal of his armor digs into her, but she cannot find it in her to care. He is more than a head taller than her, and her face is pressed into the deep red fur of his mantle. “I can’t tell you how much I missed this stupid coat when we were trudging through the snow.”

She doesn’t so much hear his laugh as feel it against her. “You can have it on the way back to Skyhold, if you’d like.”

Arravir makes a contented noise but says nothing. They remain like that for a few minutes, not letting go of each other and asking little questions about any injuries the others have had, how they are feeling, when they last ate.

Then, Arravir steps back and rolls her shoulders, wanting to talk more seriously. “I’m supposed to meet with just about everyone of importance tomorrow, including the Empress. These kinds of diplomatic run-arounds are...wearing thin on me,” she admits to him with a sigh.

“I would be surprised if they weren’t,” Cullen says gently. “I did write to our Lady Ambassador weeks ago to note that even my...personal inclinations" -- he cleared his throat, cheeks still turning pink after all these months -- "there aside, I think it’s useless to ‘secure diplomatic relations’ - as she described it - if Corypheus and Samson use that time to secure whatever it is they’re after.” 

“I agree.” Arravir is slightly surprised he had been agreeing with and supporting her without her knowledge, but reminds herself that she should not be. It has been the better part of a year that they have been together now, and she needs to remember to have trust in him, to have trust in _them._ “I’m glad you did. To stay put together, I keep reminding myself that, were I not being paraded around like this...I might have just run forward. Charged into the heart of the wilds alone to go after him.”

“Honestly…” Cullen admits, “I half expected you might have tried it anyway.” 

“It _did_ cross my mind on more than one occasion, Commander” she says bluntly.

He laughs. “Well, I appreciate your honesty, _Inquisitor_.” His eyes travel somewhere above her head as he sighs. “Regardless, I suppose I do see the merit in their plan. They’re planning for the long game, that this is not anywhere near the end of Corypheus or the Inquisition. But me...I’ve been commanding my troops to fight as if this is the final battle.” He almost scoffs at himself. “As if there ever is such a thing.”

“Well,” Arravir replies evenly, “I fight every battle as if it is _my_ final one, and it has kept me alive.”

“That it has.” His voice is so quiet she almost misses it. His hand very lightly cups her face, and she leans into the touch. “Maker, please stay safe in this one.” He whispers it like a prayer.

Arravir stands on the tips of her toes and pulls him down into a gentle kiss. “Let’s go to bed, vhenan.”

He tilts his head curiously, expression almost exasperated. “Vhenan,” he repeats the word clumsily. “When are you going to tell me what that means?”

  
“I don’t know, _vhenan_ ,” she says lightly, playfully, before sobering as she runs a hand along his jawline, saying her own silent prayer for his safety. “One day.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of the Arbor Wilds having their own kind of control over the climate is my own invention, but I thought it was a physical way to emphasize the ancient, unknowable magic of the forests there.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading!


	3. The Approach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: there are some semi-graphic descriptions of violence/gore in this chapter!

It is _hot._ It is late morning, approaching midday, and the sun stands nearly directly above them, making the shadows of the colossal forest almost unseen. It would almost be eerie, if Arravir wasn’t so bored. 

There is sweat gathering uncomfortably at her temples as she moves from foot to foot to keep her body awake. It is six full days since she arrived at the main Inquisition camp in the wilds, and over this time she has spoken with countless people, including some of her own team who have arrived in disjointed pieces. Through all this, she attempts to find time to speak with the less important -- the foot soldiers, the cooking staff, the messengers. But, currently, a Duke is regaling her in his throaty accent -- not just Orlesian, but with the precision of speech of those educated in Val Royeaux -- about the feats of his own private regiment and, of course, himself. This wanders, rather vainly, into leisurely descriptions of his sprawling estate in the countryside and the thirty foot tapestries he has recently acquired.

Arravir lets her mind wander, but she nods cordially at practiced intervals, feigning a deep fascination. She may not care for his words, but she has listened to Josephine’s lessons on nobility, so she knows _exactly_ who he is, and how his sister is only semi-privately carrying on an affair with a married noble in Antiva. She presses her lips together tightly to restrain herself from asking if this ornate tapestry of his is from a family... _business_ deal in Antiva. 

Instead, she looks sideways at Josephine, who is smiling politely and interjecting with questions about the architecture. The Ambassador has her hair in a complex updo consisting of multiple braids and a bun, with only a few hairs out of place. She is dressed as though she were holding court at Skyhold, and Arravir supposes that this itself is a part of The Game. Were she to be wearing anything more practical or battle-ready, it would seem like a sign of weakness, that the Ambassador does not believe in her peoples’ defenses. 

Creators, she hates Orlesians.

Arravir herself is in full armor, though she has not seen combat yet today, as she has been restrained to the camp as a smiling doll instead. She has joined the fray a few times in the last few days, but never going too far from camp, as she knew she would be called back soon enough. The battle rages harder, and when she listens close, she can hear the distant yells and clangs of swords colliding from just over the crest of a nearby hill. She thinks of all the ones who fall in her name, and finds that it is hard to breathe.

A young elven woman with a face that would likely be rounder if it weren’t so sallow approaches from behind the Duke. She is dressed in simple garb, and hesitates before speaking. When she does, it is as if the Duke has only just noticed her presence; he stiffens but does not make complete eye contact with the woman. “I’m sorry to disturb you, ser, but I’ve just heard word from the blacksmith that she has finished repairing your blade.”

“Can you not see I am engaged in discussion with the _Inquisitor_?” The Duke says, rolling his watery eyes and waving a hand in that exaggerated mode of gesticulation that Orlesians have, as if attempting some emotion near embarrassment. “Inquisitor, please forgive my staff’s poor manners, I can’t imagine where they learned such --”

“Ser, with all due respect,” the woman pipes up, face scrunching up as she seems to summon the nerve for defiance within her, “you instructed me to inform you when repairs were finished immediately and without delay.”

Arravir looks at the elven woman with a sense of pride until the Duke begins huffing something low and dangerous under his breath in Orlesian. The woman’s face seems to grow more pale as his words hit her.

“She has done no offense --” Arravir begins, before a shout from the side side cuts her off. 

“Inquisitor! Lady Montilyet!” A messenger is running towards them, face bright with sweat and excitement. “Urgent message from the Spymaster, you’ll want to take this immediately. We think we’ve found what Corypheus is after.”

_Finally._ Impatience floods her, and she looks at Josephine with unbridled eagerness. The Ambassador nods fervently and begins making a cordial excuse to the Duke, and Arravir distantly hears her trying to smooth out the situation by commenting on the convenience that they should both be called away at the same moment. Arravir’s heart is beating in her ears; in her mind she is tearing through the forest, over the hills and under tree roots the height of the Duke’s estate -- finally in pursuit of answers, and the monster that started this all.

As she turns to follow the messenger, her eyes catch the face of the elven servant again, and Arravir feels something in her snap.

> _She remembers being a young girl -- 9? Maybe 10? -- in the alienage, diligently staying awake into the late hours of the night, waiting for her father to come home. She had been such a cheerful child, despite the squalor of her upbringing. She was not yet weary, not yet Arravir -- the name she gave herself._
> 
> _She sat on the floor by the door most nights so she wouldn’t fall asleep (though she sometimes still did). Staring at the wall across from her and its peeling yellowed wallpaper -- it was the only wall in the single room apartment with wallpaper, and she later learned it was a poor attempt by the landlord to cover up holes in the wall separating them from their neighbors’ room._
> 
> _Her father came in finally, unable to stand straight due to the pain in his back, unable to hug her properly because his arms were so fatigued from all the crates he lifted at the docks, carrying in new shipments._
> 
> _She asked him one of these nights, tugging on his arm to bring him to the table, why he did not work as a cleaner in one of those huge human homes -- the ones built of stone, she emphasized. Lots of people here do that._
> 
> _He sighed as he sat back in one of their wicker chairs just on the verge of breaking. Finally, he looked at her, and, rubbing a deep circle in between his shoulder blades, he said, “Well, the shemlen often expect their servants to fight their battles, too. I don’t want to fight for them, Lyra." He smiled, and it made him look so much younger. "I just want to come home to you.”_

Arravir rounds on the Duke suddenly then, leveling the cowardly man with a piercing glare while trying to keep the rest of her face neutral. She forces a smile to her lips as she says, “Ser, I don’t mean to pry into your personal affairs, but I just wanted to say that I hope you are justly rewarding your staff for following you into a war zone. That’s very brave, and they continue to be diligent in their tasks.” She stares at him a few moments longer, watching him puff up his chest indignantly before suddenly deflating under her gaze.

  
“Of- Of course, Inquisitor! I --” He begins, but she is not listening.

“What is your name?” She asks the young woman.

“Madelaine, Your Worship,” she says confidently, a slight smile on her features.

“Good to meet you, Madelaine,” Arravir says, and without another word, she walks away briskly.

Catching up with the other two, who have already begun walking towards Josephine’s tent, Arravir whispers, “When this is over, offer the Duke’s servant Madelaine a job. I’m sure we’d provide better wages than whatever he gives.”

“Of course, Inquisitor,” Josephine says with a small smile, not even pausing in her gait to write a note on the notepad she has already produced, likely to make copies of whatever information Leliana has sent.

Morrigan is waiting by Josephine’s tent when the three of them arrive there. “It sounds like my...expertise will be of use soon,” she says with a cool confidence as a way of greeting. Arravir nods, unable to contain her own enthusiasm.

The messenger seems to realize for a moment the importance of all the company they are in, looking around at them with wide eyes before handing the letter to Josephine, who unfolds it quickly. “Our scouts have spotted Corypheus at last, Inquisitor. He is heading towards an elven ruin to the north.” They wipe a hand across their forehead. “We can clear you a path through his armies. Commander Cullen has already sent word that he is concentrating his men along the route to these ruins, Your Worship, so you and your team can head out at your earliest convenience.”

Arravir looks between the messenger, Josephine, and Morrigan. “Then that’s it, then. Lady Morrigan, will you be ready within the hour?”

“Certainly,” she replies. “‘Tis a most urgent mission, and there will not be any delays from me.”

“Andraste guide you, Inquisitor,” the messenger says with a quick bow as they excuse themself.

As the messenger scurries away towards another cluster of tents, Morrigan looks tentatively at Arravir, something curious sparking in her bright golden eyes. Arravir has not known the woman for long, but she gets the feeling she has something important to say, so she pauses to hear it. Morrigan’s dark lips turn upwards like something teasing and she says calmly, “I wonder: Is it Andraste your soldiers invoke during battle, or does a more immediate name come to their lips?”

“Whatever you’re suggesting -- don’t,” Arravir spits out as a warning.

“It is merely an observation, I meant no offense. In fact, you would come to your soldier’s aid more quickly than a Chantry fable…” The way Morrigan seems to emphasize the word “fable” brings an involuntary sigh of relief from Arravir. “But I digress.”

Morrigan’s eyes seem to be inspecting Arravir, tracing up and down her cheeks. There seems to be some kind of uncomfortable appraisal, but also something of excitement. “If your scouts report accurately, I believe these ruins to be the Temple of Mythal.”

Arravir feels a timid grin cross her face. She is so temporarily _giddy_ she almost reaches a disbelieving hand to touch the vallaslin that curves beneath her eyes, announcing her loyalty to Mythal. But she remains still. “Really?” She says quietly.

“Indeed,” Morrigan replies, seeming satisfied she has gotten the reaction she was hoping for. “If Corypheus seeks it, then the Eluvian he covets lies within.”

She remembers that misty other place, that dimension between dimensions, the Crossroads that Morrigan had taken her to using her own Eluvian. Arravir had not been able to sleep that night, pacing the worn rug of her favorite nook in the library as she considered everything that it meant, and everything her People had once been. No dusty tome could give her the information she so desperately craved, but she had scoured every line of every relevant book available to her all the same.

Distant explosions sound just beyond the barricades surrounding the northern portion of the camp. It shocks Arravir to her senses, and she says, a little too loudly, “Then we should not sit around talking about it -- Let’s go.”

* * *

**SEVERAL HOURS LATER**

The soldier’s gloved hand is trembling in hers, convulsing with the rest of his body, propped up against one of the impossibly large trees of the Arbor Wilds. Some fungus, white and pink, clings to the bark near him, a shard of red lyrium slashed through and protruding at an unnatural angle. It glows, air throbbing around it, almost in time with the poor man's gasping breaths. 

His pale skin is so white Arravir feels as if she has stared into the sun and is left blinking away the blank spots in her vision. All of the color that must have once filled his skin seems to be pouring out of either the stab wound that has cleaved open his abdomen, or his shocked mouth.

Between frantic yelps, the man squeezes out “Herald…”

The name shocks her a moment; “Inquisitor” is the title that rolls off tongues easier these days. She is kneeling above him, feeling that even her shadow over his dying body is unnatural. The Behemoth lies feet away, flesh from its victims still hanging grotesquely from the jagged angles of its massive limbs

“In every war, men become acquainted with their deaths. Every second we waste here lets Corypheus get closer to that Temple, Inquisitor -- we cannot delay!” Morrigan’s voice pierces the air behind her, but it could be nations away, the air hangs so heavy. 

“I agree,” Cassandra says sternly. “More good people will die with every second we tarry. This young man's soul will be joined with the Maker soon enough.”

Arravir ignores them. She does not have words for the soldier, but she knows she _should_ . It is not the first or the last time she will watch someone die for this cause, for something she represents, and could prevent if she worked just _a little bit harder._ This whole forest whispers of loss; they are ancient voices, difficult to hear over the war that is now overtaking every part of it.

She squeezes his hand. His face is contorting in pain, throat whimpering as it does so. His wide, hazel eyes are becoming unfocused, yet she can tell his gaze is still on her. There is something eating at her, constricting in her chest, and she does not know why, as if she is standing on the edge of some kind of realization. 

And then the soldier’s helmet slips off further to reveal an unkempt mop of mousy hair -- sticking up messily, just as it had weeks ago when he had pulled off his hat, standing at a fireside in the snow with her and bearing a timid apology on his face.

And suddenly, as though she were struck over the head with the dull hilt of a blade...she understands. 

“Reginald Sanders,” Arravir says quietly in recognition. Some heavy part of her mind wonders when he had gotten to the front lines, but then it does not matter at all. He had, and now he is dying.

She pulls the glove - sticking from sweat and blood- off of his hand, so she can hold his bare skin. The rough, stained leather falls in the bloody dirt beside them. The air smells of rust and bitter metal.

“…Herald,” Reg gasps out again. Chest heaving from the effort, he fills in several hard gasps of air. “Of….Andraste.”

He repeats “Andraste” several times, each in more a disjointed whisper than the one before. It is like a prayer when he has forgotten all words of the Chant, but remembers the ritual of it. He is mumbling then, and there are no words she recognizes. 

And then, he is dead. 

She feels cold.

Slowly, she stands, eyes closed. Both of her hands have balled into fists. Her spine is straight. Reginald Sanders with his unruly attitude and all the stubborn independence of a rural Fereldan...He had questioned her, doubted her discernment, and yet...There he was, staring at her with the kind of reverence that three years has not made softer. He had implied she was a coward weeks earlier, but still, she was “Herald of Andraste.” Still, she was this Holy thing. 

She cannot feel her hands.

“I remember him, and his disrespect,” Cassandra whispers. “And yet, in his final moments...His faith did him credit.” The Seeker says it with a kind of respect that makes Arravir feel nauseous.

“Faith?” Dorian asks skeptically. “It feels much too... Let's just go before I start pondering all the _wrong_ questions one should be asking in the middle of a battle.”

“Yes, as I said before -” Morrigan begins, but Arravir does not hear it. She races past the human woman, down the wide and hesitant slope beside them and through a clearing. A few more soldiers call out to her in triumph and support. They tend to each other, or clean up the limp stragglers of the Red Templars. 

She tears through the Templars like bits of worn parchment, spirit blade cutting decisively and cleanly as they shriek from the flames she has already engulfed them in. She hardly even slows down. 

Her hands, grasping her staff now, are still covered in the sweat and blood of Reg Sanders. She forces his voice to the back of her mind and plows forward. The fatigue of the past few weeks and their assault on the Wilds seems to be standing just behind her. It cannot catch up to her. 

Armies of multiple nations, of three _years_ stand behind them - behind her. It is all falling on her now, all over again, like a divine revelation. She knows that this could be it, that this battle could be the end, or at least the beginning of the end, of this whole war. The person she was before, and the world they had before, feel inaccessible now. And she would not take that back if she could. 

An hour passes, or more, as time is difficult to judge in this forest. They fall deftly over shrubbery and crumbling ruins, and past enormous tree roots that bend across the ground like the legs of some spindly, giant spider. Dorian grumbles only slightly at the muddy water they wade through, and Cassandra's sigh is half-hearted. Arravir burns a tent at an enemy campsite, the Red Templars still inside, shrieking as the magic flames burst and spark until they are spat out onto the dirt. Morrigan freezes them, their bodies fragile enough from the change that she shatters them with what Arravir can only assume is a smirk. 

At last, they reach the final blockade in a wide clearing of shallow water, framed by mostly intact stone arches. She is sweat-soaked even in her light mail, throat dry as her canteen runs ever lower. Her long hair is starting to come out of its braid, but there is no time to fix it. 

Just beyond the closest row of arches, they hear the yells and grunts of battle, of sword against sword.

Leaping down from the bank without hesitation, Arravir splashes into the water. It barely goes above her ankles, and the water is not as shockingly cold as in other Southern forests. The real problem is how slippery some of the algae-covered stones at the bottom are. Cassandra, in all her bulky armor, nearly loses her balance upon hitting the water behind her. 

Charging forward to the blockade, there are several dozen people engaged in vicious combat. None of them, she realizes with a pause, have the eerie glow of the red templars. The sunlight is filtering down through the thinning green here, glinting off the swords and the deep blue and silver of the enemy's armors. Wardens.

She is scanning the field even as she approaches the bitter conflict. They seem to be matched arm for arm and blow for blow. One Inquisition soldier runs a fatal blow through the chest of a warden, who creates a surprisingly large splash when they hit the water. 

As the soldier stares a moment too long at the blood now churning in the water, another warden starts to charge them from behind. Arravir is twisting her staff in the air, flame rising from her fingertips, hungrily prowling across the length of old wood before charging through the sticky evening air to-- 

Suddenly, a shield held by a strong arm swoops through the air and bashes the would-be attacker to the ground, thudding on impact with a hard rock. He has not had time to react by the time her fire tears open his chest. As the shallow, bloody water laps at the stilled corpse, black smoke churns through the air. 

Whipping around, the man with the shield -- a face that draws a relieved sigh from her chest -- turns to see Arravir and the others descending on the battlefield. Cullen smiles quickly, shouting, “Inquisitor!” as both greeting and announcement, as he turns back to the fight.

They work well together on the battlefield, they have learned. They are both shouting orders, the other understanding exactly what their own team needs to do, and delivers the complementary orders immediately. Dorian, Morrigan, and Solas fall back, relying on long-range magic to protect the troops. Arravir calls for barriers, and all four of them do so, casting them on the warriors in their midst. 

As her own barrier falls over the man she loves, she feels a strange moment of clarity that causes time to lurch still. Even two years ago, defensive magic frustrated and eluded her, fizzling out of focus in her hands. Even when she finally _could_ , a barrier for herself was rarely thought of; she charged forth blazing with fury and little protection.

Now, she finds that the magic feels different for every person she casts a barrier on. On her fellow mages, it feels like a low thrumming that vibrates in her fingers until a point of syncopation is reached. With Cassandra, and, she later learned, Cullen, it feels resistant at first, all their Templar training rebuffing even the magic meant to shield them. 

As the barrier, bright as the white light of the sun, folds around him with a stomp of her staff, there is only a slight push - reflexes can only be unlearned so much so quickly - before the magic embraces him, and him, it. 

The battle rages. Arravir's head throbs dully from focus and dehydration, and one of her shoulders aches. She rolls it back and presses forward, funneling all of her tired will into her spirit blade. As she presses the glowing, green-yellow blade deep into the abdomen of a warden who spits and growls, she pulls them closer. Their green eyes are hollow as she twists the blade and blood spills from their mouth like that of the poor soldier from her own cause earlier that day. 

Then, in an instant her blade is gone, and the body falls over, its strings cut. 

Behind her, there is another light splash. Turning around, the air still sparks from Dorian’s magic, the purple glow highlighting various stab wounds in a warden’s exposed flesh. She surveys the field and the oddly calm waters, and realizes that that was the last of them. 

Arravir plants her staff in a spot of loose dirt at the bottom of the stream and half leans on it. Removing her canteen from her belt, she drinks greedily, panting slightly between parched chugs. She stops herself upon realizing there are only a few more mouthfuls left, knowing she will want it later. 

Returning it to her belt, she watches an unknowing fish already tearing at the exposed, bloody arm of a dead warden. The fish's head bobs garishly as it gobbles up a whole bite of what was once a powerful bicep. The casual carnality of it makes her freeze for a moment. Arravir wonders if the warden was even aware if the warden was _themself_ enough to know where they fell. Wasn't the end goal of every warden an honorable death? So what was _this?_

Then, she shakes her head and turns back to her people. Looking around at them all as they make their way to her, she says, voice loud and authoritative, “Good work, everyone. I believe that was the last of Corypheus' leashed wardens.”

“I believe so as well. And that we have performed them a mercy, Inquisitor,” Cullen’s voice is full of disgust under his stoicism. There is a splash with each footfall as he steps beside her. She turns to look at him and finds that he is already looking her over. In his gaze there is an attentiveness that tells her that his words were meant to remind _her_ as well that killing them was necessary, that it was right. She nods curtly.

Cullen's hair is falling in disarray, curling and dirty. Though his sword is sheathed, one hand rests on the hilt, ready to draw it at a moment’s notice, while the other arm still grasps his shield. 

A fresh cut is raised and bloody on his cheek. Arravir very quickly stops herself from reaching out to it, and instead lets herself privately enjoy the relief that he appears otherwise unharmed.

The urgency sets in again quickly enough. It is late afternoon now, and she does not enjoy the idea of racing after Corypheus in the dark. Clearing her throat, raising her staff, Arravir addresses him, “Commander, will you and your men be able to hold this position?” 

“As long as you require us to,” he replies dutifully. A couple of his scattered troops salute behind him in affirmation of his statement. “Now go on, Inquisitor. We’ve fought hard to get to this point, and I do not want to give Corypheus any amount of time he has not already taken.”  
  
“Me neither,” she agrees, holding his gaze even as she backs up a few paces, feet cautious on the uneven ground. The water rises above her ankles after a couple steps, and the sand softer, muddier.

“Good luck,” Cullen says, quieter.

Arravir’s mouth tilts upwards ever so slightly to one side as her free hand raises to lay protectively over her neckline, thumb caught in her scarf. She does not say anything; they both know she is holding the place where, beneath her armor, his coin hangs from its simple cord.

“Let’s go!” she calls, and hears the answering footfalls of four individuals -- despite the oddness of the stream, three of the sounds are familiar in the way they carry their weight, but Morrigan’s steps are something she is still getting used to. The woman moves in a way that makes you doubt she was there at all. 

They are heading towards a short stone staircase that waits at the end of the stream, plants growing between the spaces of each cool blue-grey stone. Flanked by trees adorned with leaves so light a green they are almost yellow in the steadily fading sun, it leads down a paved path towards walls that seem to stretch on so far in either direction that she cannot guess the size of it. Waiting at the top of the staircase is a statue of a sitting wolf -- Fen’Harel, pensive and plotting.

Despite it all, there is a sense of excitement, of an older duty, stirring in her. Arravir remembers so clearly the hot summer day she received her vallaslin, eyes held stubbornly open as her whole frame was pulled taut as the string in a hunter’s new bow. She had not allowed herself to flinch, to cringe, to emote at all as the minutes wrote in sweeping lines across her cheeks her devotion to the Mother, to the bringer of Justice. A prayer had occupied her mind, and Deshanna had said with her piercing brown gaze upon its completion, “I can think of no vallaslin more fitting for you, da’len.” 

The words, the hard-won approval, had stuck with her, affirming her place after many months of considering a dedication to Andruil. And she had always suspected that this choice was what truly made Deshanna name Arravir her First. 

Though she is leading something much larger now, she knows that it was through her dedication to Mythal that she had forged herself into someone who could wear the mantle of Inquisitor, who could sit in the throne without being made to look like a child pointing fingers.

And now here she is. Lungs burning, hair falling free, knowledge of her people’s language doubled in the past year due to the help of Solas, she is running towards the ancient place of worship to her goddess. 

In the name and the spirit of that goddess, when they beat Corypheus to the secrets he seeks, there will be justice. Justice for every bit of ugly suffering that had struck the world from his decaying fist. Justice for people like the small soldier gasping the name of a religious figure she unwillingly stood in the monumental shadow of. 

Suddenly, her mind shuts down at the returned image of the crimson blood spilling down the man’s chin. The warbled word, repeated like some kind of demonic illusion: “Andraste.” The image morphs into the greedy fish tearing at the corpse of someone who had already suffered a fate worse than death, and then to the single trail of blood that had stained Cullen’s cheek. 

Arravir stops walking halfway up the small staircase, Solas nearly bumping into her back. Slowly, trance-like, she returns her staff to her back. She does not fully hear Solas' questioning response before she is sprinting back down the steps, and then racing through the water.

She cannot explain it, this sudden twisted _want_ that leaves her hollow, leaves her wanting to claw herself clean of her skin. She wants to be looked at like she is a _person_ , not for where she fits among gods.

All the anxiety of crashing their months of established privacy melts away as Cullen watches her speed towards him, alarm knitting his brow. He is reaching for his blade, shield already half-raised. “Is something wrong?”

“There’s...something _more_ I need to do,” she can’t be more than twenty feet away now, her voice hitching with each sharp intake of breath. Fans of water kick up with each step.

“Inquisitor, whatever it is, let us handle it so that --”

“This will only take a moment, Commander,” Arravir breathes, practically crashing into him. Standing to the fullest height her tiptoes allow in the slightly spongy sand, she grabs Cullen by his furry mantle and pulls him down to her, smashing her lips against his.

  
  
Almost immediately, she feels one of his hands on the back of her head, pulling her even closer. It is desperate, sweat-soaked, his stubble longer than she is used to since he has not had time to consistently keep up appearances. So she runs a hand along his jawline, yearning to memorize the feeling of it.

  
  
Someone whistles, and she jumps back from him, less from embarrassment than from the reminder of time still marching forward. Eyes open again, hands now around his neck, she turns to see that Cullen has raised his shield to cover the two of them from watchful eyes. He is somehow smiling, fully, a blush creeping up his neck and ears. His eyes, however, betray the worry that must be dragging him down. It makes her smile, too, even as an uncertainty trembles at her lips.

“Arravir,” he says gently, as if he knows she needed to hear it. Just that.

She says nothing, but steals another quick kiss, thumb brushing over his bottom lip after her mouth does. Her own words are too difficult to call, but she hopes he understands. She _thinks_ he understands. 

Then, she turns quickly and sprints forward again, to meet - and fight - whatever fate awaits her in the temple of her People.


	4. The Sacrifice

* * *

**NINE YEARS EARLIER**

Keeper Deshanna spoke with Arravir once -- just once in nearly fifteen years -- of her son. Her son who had joined another Clan during the Arlathvhen before Arravir had been taken in by Clan Lavellan. She saw him years later during the next meeting of Clans, his face soft, a smile almost the natural position of his mouth. 

Clan Lavellan had been blessed with many mages, Deshanna explained to her on that day, unremarkable aside from the conversation. It was a calm afternoon some six years before the destruction of the human Conclave, and the two of them were sitting beside a stream in the forest. The banks were steep, so they had been positioned nearly vertically, straight-backed and tense despite the heat of the lazy summer afternoon; neither of them possessed it within them to understand relaxation. 

"My son," she said, voice even, "has had the gift of magic from a young age, and found an easy communication with spirits in the Beyond. And Clan Tillahnnen had few with the gift, which, I do not need to tell you, da’len, is perhaps the most frightening future for the People.” Deshanna’s thick dark curls bounced with each nod of her head or practiced gesticulation. There was a firm kind of gentleness to her movements, the dark skin of her arms tight with muscle beneath her leather bracers, and the warm brown of her eyes were fixed on her apprentice beside her. “No one begged or pleaded with him. He volunteered to go. He recognized duty when he saw it.” 

Arravir listened obediently, pensively, and stirred the pulsing water beneath them absentmindedly with the tip of her staff. A few twigs and bits of what seemed to be torn, dirty cloth were being tossed in the current to a choking point some ten feet downstream from them where the creek narrowed. Deshanna's story churned up so many ugly questions in her, made her want to spit some kind of half-understood accusation at the man she hardly knew. How could he? How was abandonment _duty?_ It was selfish, irresponsible, disloyal --

She did not say anything, but strode across the bank wordlessly to where the water swirled around itself, unable to pass through the new obstacle of both the natural and unnatural. With a kick to the small dam of twigs, the water poured forth again, compensating for its inaction with a rush. Arravir cursed at herself when she did not kneel quick enough to pluck the dirty fabric before it was thrown further downstream to clog some future bend. 

Without turning around, she said, “You could have gone with him.”

“Da’len, if you believe a Keeper may abandon their duties so easily, have I made the wrong decision in naming my First?” Deshanna’s words were biting, but still uttered evenly. When Arravir tried to find it in her to draw up some apology she wasn’t even sure she meant, she turned back to the woman she owed her life to, and Deshanna was standing, already posing another question. “If, at Arlathvhen, you were asked to leave Clan Lavellan to another that needed you, would you do it, Arravir?”

“I... Yes, I would.” Her pause was shorter than she would expect of herself. 

An understanding smile sat proudly on Deshanna’s features. “Very well.”

Arravir still was not satisfied. This scenario did not include her deciding without any sort of prompting to...leave. Leave her _family._ A ribbon of energy shot up the twisting length of her staff, held in both of her hands. “It’s not the same, Keeper.”

And then, Deshanna’s face twisted with something she couldn't quite name -- amusement? Struck still by her own confusion, Arravir did not move as the other woman took a step closer to her. “But...isn’t it the same, da’len?”

“No, it’s not!” With an anguished sigh, Arravir stepped up the bank then, positioning her feet carefully in the loose dirt. Looking down at the other woman, who had propped her own staff beside her and crossed her arms across her middle, Arravir asked, “Keeper, may I return to the Clan and my other duties? I am sure Samahl is waiting to antagonize me about --"

“Not yet. It is important that you understand two things. Come down to the water again. The day is young enough, and I am not used to looking _up_ at you.” There was a hint of a joke in her final words, emphasized once Arravir leapt down beside her and the older woman stood nearly a full head taller than her. 

Slowly, Deshanna lowered herself onto the thin, slightly muddy embankment, foot catching for a moment in a spindly plant at the water’s edge as she crossed her thick legs. Arravir joined her immediately, without needing to be beckoned to do so. Staff still in her hands, she spread her legs out into the water, shocked at how cold it was, almost too cool for this time of year. Her feet sank into the mixture of mud and silt at the shallow bottom. She looked hesitantly from the whispering stream to Deshanna and back again, unsure of where to hold her gaze. 

There was a long pause, filled only with the sounds of distant birds and the chattering of the water over rocks that were still being smoothed out in the current. Arravir adjusted her staff so it leaned against her shoulder, and her eyes shifted, almost shamefully, to her lap.

“Chin up, da’len,” Deshanna said at last, and the words were so familiar to Arravir that she could have repeated them with the Keeper: “ _Eyes up. Stare down the world that would rather have you bow._ ”

Rather than speak the words, Arravir looked up so it was understood that she knew. Deshanna, of course, said them anyway, and some part of her appreciated it every time she did. The words had played through her mind more than any other, for years and years, before she had even given herself a name. That day, however, there had been a certain ferocity to them that Arravir could not quite place.

Deshanna nodded in acknowledgement then, and spoke. “You must understand, Arravir, that if you left to serve somewhere else - and I believe you would if called - it would be the same sacrifice as my son. Because Clan Lavellan _is your family._ ”

At that, Arravir thought she might be sick as a wave of nausea swept over her. One hand balled into a fist as her breathing sped up. The sunlight illuminated the Keeper from behind like something ethereal, and focusing on that was all Arravir could do to stop from toppling like something else discarded in the stream.

Family. That... was not something she had ever let herself consider before. The word _stung_ too much to be anything she wanted, let alone _deserved._ She did not believe herself to be the same person as the little girl scraping by in the alienage with the love and vigilance of her father. Sitting there, feet nearly numbed from the cool of the water, she took a deep breath to steady herself.

Finding her words, she said, quieter than she had hoped, “And the second thing?”

At that, the Keeper broke her own rule and looked down. Her simple silhouette cast against the sun and the persistent noise of the stream was an image Arravir knew right then that she would never be able to forget. Centuries of sadness had seemed to carve their way across Deshanna’s unbroken features for a few seconds until she finally beat them back into her usual stoic brand of pride. Her voice was slow, and bold.

  
  
“Sacrifice is...part of what it means to be elvhen.”

* * *

**PRESENT DAY**

“As each servant of Mythal reached the end of their years, they would pass their knowledge on...through this. All that we were. All that we knew. It would be lost forever.” Abelas’ words repeat in her mind, inscribing themselves inside her being. 

This Vir’abelasan...it contains whole _lives,_ whole generations. More than the ancient memorials and whispering trees in the Emerald Graves, more than the rest of this forest that pulses with secrets. Don’t the Dalish spend their whole lives hoping for even a _drop_ of something like this? Abelas and Morrigan continue speaking, but Arravir cannot let go of this idea, cannot stop the tears already forming in her eyes. 

They are in front of the massive, circular pool, its depths clear. She has never seen water so still. And yet...she can feel it, like a spirit from the Fade but stronger, weaving its way through her skull. She gets the strange feeling that someone is touching her, caressing her face. “Brave it if you must, but know this: You shall be bound forever to the will of Mythal,” Abelas says sternly, his eyes bright even beneath his hood.

“I already am,” Arravir replies defiantly.

“You could not understand,” he says, unfazed, refusing to recognize that they wear the same vallaslin. She wants to scream at him to look at her, _really_ look at her, and see how they are the same.

Morrigan interjects. “Bound? To a goddess who no longer exists, if she ever did?”

Arravir turns around sharply to glare at her. “What more _proof_ could you possibly need of her existence?”

Abelas ignores them both. “Bound. As _we_ are bound. The choice is yours.”

Arravir holds his gaze then, and slowly looks down at her hands. There is ash on her palms, remnants of her fire, sweat and blood -- blood of her own, of templars, of wardens, and...of Reg Sanders, she remembers - and her left hand still beats that unnatural green in time with the rhythm of her heart.

A tear slips down her cheek, crossing her vallaslin as it falls.

“Elven legend states that Mythal was tricked by Fen’harel and banished to the Beyond,” Morrigan says, as if reciting a text. Arravir hates how impersonal it sounds, when she knows the sorrow that fills a hahren’s voice when they tell the same tale to wide-eyed children.

“‘Elven legend,’” Abelas says with a hint of condescension when referring to the term, “is wrong. The Dread Wolf had nothing to do with her murder.”

“Murder!?” Arravir exclaims, and is shocked to hear Morrigan echo her statements. 

“She was slain, if a God truly can be. Betrayed by those who destroyed this temple,” Abelas says, and Arravir feels like a young teenager in the Clan again, trying to memorize their stories with as much vigor as possible, to be as _elven_ as possible. “Yet the vir’abelasan remains. As do we. That is something.”

“That is everything,” Arravir says under her breath, quiet enough so no one else hears. Louder then, she says, “We will not squander this.”

He does not reply to that. Solas and Morrigan ask more questions. Solas speaks in elven with him, but earns only a passing glance from Arravir, who has stepped to the edge of the well, and cannot tear her eyes away from the water. Morrigan comments on the Eluvian, how she was correct in one respect, at least.

But Arravir does not care how wrong _she_ has been about their stories. It is not about pride when looking at the errors of their remembered history. It is about finding the truth.

And, maybe it is also about the fact that for so many centuries...Mythal's betrayal -- though false -- has _been_ their truth.

“You recall when I took you through my Eluvian, I said each required a key?” Morrigan asks. Arravir does not look up, but nods. “The well is the key. Take its power, and Mythal’s last Eluvian will be no more use to Corypheus than glass.”

Arravir smiles slightly, knowing they’ve beaten him -- beaten him away from knowledge of _her_ People. 

There is a pause. “I did not expect the well to feel so...hungry,” Morrigan says. 

That makes Arravir turn to look at Morrigan, who holds her hand outstretched, fingers moving slightly in midair, like she is reaching out, like she is waiting for something.

Arravir cannot help but feel that whatever Morrigan is feeling is nothing at all like what she is.

“It’s not hungry,” she says, stooping down and placing a tentative hand on the mosaic tiled edge. She looks at her reflection in the still water, and feels the light touch on her skin again, tracing up her arm. “It’s yearning.”

“Choose whatever word you like, but…” Morrigan’s face becomes still as stone. Her words are tinged with some kind of insatiable, detached desire. “Knowledge begets a hunger for more.”

Feeling a sense of dread, Arravir stands again as Morrigan pleads, “I am willing to pay the price the well demands. I am also the best suited to use its knowledge in your service.”

“Or more likely to your own ends,” Solas interjects.

“What would you know of my ‘ends,’ elf?” Morrigan asks defensively.

“ _Elf_?” Arravir cuts in incredulously, but Solas is already hurling his accusations at her: “You are a glutton drooling at the sight of a feast. You cannot be trusted.”

Arravir looks at Solas and nods. She agrees, scared by the way Morrigan has looked at the well, and spoken of it like something eyeing its prey.

“Of those present, I alone have the training to make use of this. Let me drink, Inquisitor,” Morrigan appeals to Arravir. 

_How dare she._ Arravir rounds on her, sending sparks hurling up the length of her staff. “You alone? This is _my_ heritage!”

The witch of the wilds remains unmoved, as she had all throughout the temple as she made claims about the supposed “savagery” of the Dalish. “I have studied the oldest lore. I have delved into mysteries of which _you_ could only _dream_!”

A small shrub across the pond bursts into flames as Arravir steps closer to Morrigan. Cassandra makes a noise of surprise. She does not care. The human woman is taller than she is, but Arravir stares her down as if she is smaller than a newborn halla. “And why could we only dream of that, Morrigan? Did you think about that? Because we were enslaved, murdered, robbed of our language and our homeland by shemlen like you! Shemlen who think they know us better than we do.”

Morrigan looks only mildly annoyed. She takes another step closer. “Can you honestly tell me there is anyone better suited?”

“I would be,” Arravir says, her whole body trembling. “ _Dirthara ma, shemlen. I. Would. Be,_ ” she repeats, voice low and grating. 

“You lead the Inquisition,” Morrigan says slowly, as if reminding Arravir of some basic fact she has forgotten. “This is not a risk you can take. I have the best chance of making use of the well..for everyone. _Let me drink._ ”

“You think I don’t understand the risk?” Arravir throws her arm out in a pointed gesture. “Looking at it, listening to it...That’s not just knowledge from the ancient elven priests. It’s their _will. That’s_ what Abelas was telling us. The collective will of the priests puts anyone who drinks under a compulsion, a geas. Can’t you _feel_ it?” She narrows her eyes. “Or are you too busy thinking of what you would plunder from it?”

“That would match the legends, but that does not tell us what the geas entails.” Morrigan sounds more reasonable, more collected. “I would still use the well, but you are right. We must be cautious.”

Arravir sighs, closing her eyes, knowing she’s made some kind of impression. She steps towards the edge again, her feet jutting out just over the edge. She does not look at any of them. “If anyone is to use the well, it will be me.”

“Inquisitor --” She hears Cassandra’s voice behind her, somewhat desperate. “Think of the Inquisition, of the risk you are taking --”

Morrigan’s words grow inflammatory again. “So you will take what little knowledge you can understand, and --”

Arravir is already stepping down the stone ledge and into the water; it rushes towards her like it cannot get enough of her, like it will pull her down into its shallow depths, but she knows she will not drown. There is no trace of the fear that has sat on her shoulder all her life, whispering. She knows who she is. She knows her will cannot be shaken, cannot be dominated.

The air itself is sparking around her with shiny blues and greens, as if in some kind of celebration or...revival. Her fingertips trace little waves into the water's now-excited surface. As she wades towards the center, the voices grow louder and louder, blocking out the angry, confused, concerned voices of her companions. She spins around once, twice, three times like she is a little girl dancing in puddles. Her armor sinks around her legs and waist, weighing her down with each step, like stones tied to her feet. And yet she has never felt so close to flying.

“Mythal ma ghilana,” she whispers as the glow of it grows stronger, warm on her face. Almost too warm, but she dismisses it. Arravir can feel how overwhelming this will be, how daunting. The voices are almost yelling in her ear, but she welcomes it, embraces the _challenge_.

There may be risks, but they are hers. They were always meant to be hers. 

Looking back through the air that is now growing more opaque around her, she sees the vague outlines of Dorian, Cassandra, Solas, and Morrigan. Scooping water into her bare hands, letting it wash away the dirt and ash and blood, she raises her voice and says to them:

“ _Sacrifice is...part of what it means to be elvhen.”_

The moment the water touches her lips, it is searing down her throat, as though she is swallowing burning coals. She forces it down as the pool suddenly explodes around her, bursting forward in a scream, in a _wail_ \-- and with finality. Arravir is falling -- she knows she must be -- though she feels outside of her body. And her eyes are wide open, but a darkness clouds over her vision. Tears stream down her face as though she is weeping, sobbing water that then boils when it touches her skin. She is convulsing as though her body is breaking with the misery. 

And then, there is cold. Nothing but the cold, the hollowness. Cold. Ringing. Stone echoing pitifully at the bottom of a pit. A well. So cold.

Cold stone on the side of her face, she finally realizes, so she knows she has hit the ground. But her body is immobile now. Unmoving and twisted in the empty pool, her cheek presses uncomfortably into the grooves between the tiles. She does not fight it -- the cold, the dark, the pain -- and instead lets the sorrows cradle her all the way down to their murky, uncharted depths. If only for a moment. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arravir's elven translation:  
> \- Mythal ma ghilana = Mythal guide me  
> \- Dirthara ma (directed at Morrigan) = May you learn (a threat)
> 
> Some of the lines at the Well are taken directly from in game, some are modified, and some are all mine (or, Arravir's).
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	5. The Breakdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter was the turning point of the story, and everything from here on out will be the fallout of drinking from the well.
> 
> Negative views expressed about Morrigan are Arravir's! Not entirely mine (though I am incredibly frustrated with how she was written in the temple of mythal and most of DAI).

Arravir feels like she has been screaming for days. 

Right after falling out of the Eluvian and into the narrow, dusty room Morrigan has shoved it into, her team tries to pick apart her mind, or, worse, yell their frustration. They are all still panting, still exhilarated from barely escaping Corypheus, but, somehow, they find it in them to be accusatory. Their voices smash together behind her, grating like flint and stone.

_"Why would you do it?!"_

_"Do you even understand what you’ve done? "_

_"The needs of the Inquisition are greater than your --"_

_"You cannot possibly comprehend the --"_

_"Inquisitor, delusions and pride aside, I would be best equipped to --"_

And, louder still, are the words felt _inside_ of her, dozens and dozens of voices half-understood. Whispering but entirely captivating, sharp but undefined. They scratch and claw from the inside out, prying her fingers away from where, she is surprised to find, she has covered her ears desperately. 

Her whole body shaking, knees digging into the cold stone, she tears herself wordlessly away from Solas and Morrigan’s belligerent accusations, Cassandra’s blunt disapproval, and even Dorian’s concern. One of them puts a hand on her shoulder and she jerks violently away, throwing out an arm as if to strike without direction.

“It is clear you are not reacting positively to the Well, Inquisitor. If I had been allowed --” Morrigan’s voice begins again in response to her disjointed movements.

Fury sparks from her, manifesting as lightning and weaving its way to crackle through the open air. She storms across the gardens -- still snow covered, she realizes with a shock, having forgotten the month while in the Arbor Wilds -- and runs through the main hall, ignoring every member of the shocked staff who looks, stares, or calls out. And then, she throws herself into her quarters, (but still pauses to soften the slam of the door behind her).

Her consciousness lurches forward then; Arravir does not know how she has gotten up the winding stairs to the top of the tower, or why she has torn every blanket and sheet from her bed, even pulling out the extra comforters Josephine had ordered and stored beneath the wooden frame. All she _does_ know is that she has somehow wound up, still armored, still dirty, laying in a pile of all those blankets in the middle of the floor of her chambers -- _sobbing_.

Arravir weeps like all the tragedies of her People have only now been made known to her, and she folds over and over on herself. Legs drawn up to her wildly heaving chest, she lays on her back, then on her side, then on her front, hands tearing at the sweaty loose mane of her hair like something dying. 

She stays there for a full day. And the whispers only get louder. 

Fuck Solas, fuck Abelas, fuck Morrigan -- _fuck_ Morrigan, she would not be able to comprehend the...the utter _devastation._ She would want answers, not a _story._ The elves are a means to an end to her...No, worse than that: their knowledge is a means to her, but the People - like _myself_ , Arravir thinks bitterly - are an obstacle. Dirty, foolish obstacles who need to return to the forests where the trees have no eyes to roll at their outdated practices. 

Fuck Morrigan.

* * *

Like all breaking things, there comes a point where she cannot break any more, where the dam has nothing more to empty. The tears stop coming, her cheeks are damp in the cold air, nose running petulantly. Her chest slows to a steady rise and fall, the blankets in a state of disarray with her in the middle, as if there had been an explosion reaching out from her. A dull pain throbs through her head, and she does not know if it is a normal headache or a side effect of the Well. 

Some part of her back has been touching the bare ground; she can feel the coolness of it even through her thin mail. The fabric of her under armor has bunched up awkwardly to one side, she realizes as she shifts uncomfortably. A dull pain makes itself known, likely the spot that struck the bottom of the well when she fell.

Most of the latticed windows around her quarters are frosted over, ice obscuring the world to tell a story of its own. Even just past her balcony, the world is opaque. 

One of her hands absently toys with the cord around her neck, thumb running along the raised surface of Cullen’s coin still held there.

She blinks her heavy eyes, and slowly sits up. Some part of her hates this ending of her cries, wants to crawl into the terror of her screams and make a home there. The calm afterward, the silence so loud she can hear the door to the balcony creak with the winds...it is unnerving. But the voices are still echoing beneath her skull. They are still difficult to discern amidst the waves of all the others.

Over the course of the second day, many attempt to speak with her. She snaps at well-meaning servants who try to enter her quarters, pushing down her own guilt, knowing she will apologize later. Solas attempts to talk to her, and she turns him away in some patched together mixture of the common tongue and elven. Cassandra leaves a tray of food on her desk without immediately trying to make contact. Then, she pauses at the top of the stairs.

“You have always stood confidently by your decisions, and I have admired that, whether I agree with them or not. In this, I have made clear my belief of your decision, but you should know what I believe of you: I have no doubt that you are the best leader the Maker could have sent to us, that you see the path ahead while the rest of us are still grasping for the map. _That_ is what I believe of you. I expect you to live up to it, Inquisitor.”

Arravir says nothing, acknowledges nothing before Cassandra is gone. She turns over angrily, hands holding her head again. And then, she screams, just to hear the sound of it.

There is no space in her mind to fully evaluate what Cassandra has said yet, but the last stinging line knocks against the dusty stone beneath her, again and again and again.

She rolls over, drawing her knees to her chest, and thinks of how tired she is of living up to other people's _beliefs._ How no one wants to hear her own. 

* * *

  


It is on the third day back at Skyhold, then, that Dorian cautiously appears at the top of the stairs. He stands for a moment, waiting until she makes eye contact with him, acknowledges him, before strolling in as if it is actually _his_ bedchamber that she just so happens to be in. Arravir, still in her armor, still amidst the blankets of her now bare bed, sits up and looks at him, unsure of what he might do or say. Her head has been throbbing more, likely from how little food and water she has had the past few days. She does not believe she has the strength for whatever convoluted argument he might conjure. And she does not... _want_ to fight with him.

Throwing himself with a kind of casual disdain onto the couch beside the stairwell, Dorian raises a hand to thoughtfully stroke his chin. It is not lost on Arravir, even through her clouded mind, that he is allowing her space; the couch is some fifteen feet from where she sits. 

“Well, would you like to know what I think of this whole messy going-on?” Dorian asks, breaking the silence. Then, without waiting for an answer, he leans forward slightly and says brightly, “Of course you do: I happen to be of the opinion that your comrades here clearly don’t know you _nearly_ as well as they think they do.”

Arravir narrows her eyes at him then, pushing her bangs out of her face, but says nothing.

“Would _Arravir Lavellan_ , who divides her days evenly between being the proudest elf to ever live, and the proudest _mage_ to ever live - besides my compatriots, of course - take a swig from a _magic_ well of _elven_ knowledge?” Dorian’s voice is dripping with sarcasm, a slight smirk pulling at his mouth. “Yes! Obviously! Except it won’t just be a swig, she’ll down the whole goblet and ask for seconds! Next question? Hopefully a less obvious one this time. Such as…’Would the Chantry like to pretend all of history is about itself?’”

Rubbing at her tired eyes, she shifts to face him better. Her sharp features cautiously pull on a weary smile then. “I knew you would be the only one here who I could talk to.” Her voice is rough; it sounds like that of a stranger.

“Good!” Dorian says. “Then at least _you_ know _me_ as well as I thought you might.”

He stands and walks over, helping Arravir to her feet then, and after a few hesitant, shaky steps, trying and failing to not lean on him for support. Then, she finds herself sitting on the couch beside him. She settles, pulling off the scarf that is tied close to a choking point around her neck. He is brushing himself off, and glances curiously at a book resting on the arm of the couch, leather spine cracking. A question occurs to her, and sits perched in her mouth. She sits for a few moments then, not quite looking at him, and finally decides to ask it. 

“You’re…” Arravir realizes she does not know how to ask it. “Dorian, you are an educated man...You’ve studied history and magic…” Thinking of Morrigan’s words about knowing more than she could ever _dream_ , her hands involuntarily close into fists around the scarf now sitting on her lap. She thinks of all the times in the library she had quietly walked over to him, waiting until no one else was around, and asked him the meaning of some unknown word, a long jumble of letters not taught or relevant in alienage or Clan. “Do you think that you would have been ‘better suited’ to drink?”

“No.” Dorian reels back then, clearly surprised. She looks to his face, and he blinks slowly, cautiously. His mouth draws into a tight line. “A human from Tevinter scooping up the last bits of elven knowledge?” He says it plainly, but quietly. “I know why you ask. But...I could not have been that man. And I know that you would not have wanted me to.”

Arravir cannot explain it, but then she is crying again, crossing her arms and pressing her hands helplessly into her sides. She turns her head away from him as the tears fall, some of her tangled reddish-brown hair that is loose from its half-braid obscures her face, clings to her cheeks. He lets her cry, says very little. 

“Thank you, lethallin,” she chokes out, pushing her hair stubbornly back. She pulls the full braid and all its free strands over her shoulder, half tempted to cut it all off. She looks at Dorian, suddenly and viscerally aware of her own appearance.   
  
Before long, he helps her undo the braid and comb through the cobweb of her hair. She, bleary eyed, instructs him about which drawer to find a brush in, one tough enough to manage her thick hair. 

She bristles at first when she feels one of Dorian's hands on the small of her back. Despite insisting it is okay, she stills, like some terrified prey that is leaning into death for survival. Eventually, though, she relaxes. As his hands carefully work through measured sections of her long hair, she is lulled into a silence that is at last comfortable. 

With more clarity, concern finally takes over -- she asks him quietly if he has been eating and sleeping and taking care of himself these past few days.

To her great surprise, he does not deflect from the truth. He answers, quite soberly, though with an unconscious tug on her scalp. He talks about bouts of restless sleep, and nightmares worse than the usual sort. Before he leaves again, she stops him to recommend her favorite tea from her friends among the kitchen staff; the draught frequently helps calm her nerves on sleepless nights.

When the sun sets that third day, Arravir has eaten, bathed, and changed from her armor at last. Leaving her quarters only to ghost through the kitchens, and offer that apology to the servants she had snapped at, she takes a mug of that very tea...with a spoonful more of honey than she normally takes.

And she still is not able to sleep.

* * *

The voices never stop, whether Arravir lays or runs or tries to fill her head with other words from the fortresses of books she builds herself in the library as the brutal winter crawls icy trails up every window of the fortress. It is disorienting, thrilling, challenging, _necessary._

She cannot say how many days it has been since she drank from the vir abelassan; her head is half-filled with history, memories lived by so many people dance around her as if her body is her only anchor to _now._ And there are so many aches in her body, too, so many stupid, superfluous hurts from rushed mistakes in that battle that tore across an untrekked forest. 

It is still rampaging, she has heard. Someone had informed her yesterday (two days ago?), but she cannot remember who, that they had received word from the advisors. Though Corypheus has vanished from the field, his forces still claw their way through that strange wilderness. Their fight is far from over. Part of her wishes still that she was there, bleeding alongside her people, rather than hunched over in window sills, trembling.

With so much of its population still fighting off the remains of the Red Templars in the Arbor Wilds, Skyhold nearly resembles a ruin all on its own, with a strange quiet between the ancient stone walls. Kitchen staff seem unsure of what to do without so many mouths to feed, and the birds Leliana left behind for their use caw angrily as if demanding attention. Supposedly, the most “essential” members of the Inquisition have already begun their trek back to Skyhold. She thinks she remembers being told that. She hopes that she has, hand clutching protectively over the coin.

_Luck,_ she thinks amusedly, as if it is a joke. _We’ll see._

It is as if both Arravir and the entire fortress are perched waiting for something, but she is not sure what.


	6. The Splintering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After many more days of waiting, the Advisors return to Skyhold, and Arravir learns more about her place in the Inquisition, and in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I'm sorry for the months-long delay between the last chapter and this one. I had some big life changes going on that distracted me from this story, but I'm happy to return to it. If you're still reading this -- thank you! 
> 
> Special shout-out to my friend FidgetyWriter and user morningstar95 for your wonderful comments and insight. Thank you!
> 
> There are ups and downs in this chapter, but I'd say that as a whole: it has to get worse before it gets better (and it will get better).

> _ Keeper, _
> 
> _ I have news that is too big for my words, but I will try. Only you will understand. _
> 
> _ But first, tell me of Wycome. I was traveling and may have missed your most recent letter, but the last I received you mentioned a sickness in the clan. Has it persisted? And what of the two elves from the alienage who you said you were taking refuge with you? Are they still among the clan? Tell me what I can do for you from here.  _
> 
> _ I was traveling recently in the largest battle the Inquisition has taken part in yet. I wish you and hahren Roshan could have seen the Arbor Wilds. You both would have seen the muffled stories there from the Beyond, clearer than I could. _
> 
> _ In the wilds, we discovered a temple from our People -- still occupied by our People! They were living ancient elves, not yet in uthenera! They were hooded and wore armor that shined. I have never seen anything like it before. It was a temple to Mythal.  _
> 
> _ These guardians of the Temple said that Mythal was not betrayed by Fen'harel, but that she was betrayed and murdered. I did not learn  _ who  _ murdered her, but I intend to. Because this temple had a well, called the Vir Abelasan, full of ancient magic. The guardians of the Temple said it contained the will and knowledge of every servant of Mythal from times unknown.  _
> 
> _ A shemlen I am traveling with tried to take the knowledge for herself, but I drank from it instead. That fact has angered many. I do not care. Their disapproval is nothing new to me. It is difficult to explain the Vir Abelasan, Keeper. It is...loud. Persistent. I don’t know how to explain this, but it feels like it is shaking, like when a person cries and cannot restrain their body. _
> 
> _ But we are so close to Corypheus, and I am stuck. I realize now that perhaps I actually do not know how to be this "Inquisitor" and be Elvhen, as much as I have pretended to. I do not know if it is possible.  _
> 
> _ You know that I am blunt. So here is what I am really asking of you: I am seeking your approval. And your advice. I need your words and your clarity now perhaps more than ever. _
> 
> _ Dareth shiral. _
> 
> _ \--Arravir _

* * *

She knows the specific calls that lure the birds from their perches, but she brings crumbs from the kitchens all the same. A whole flock of them come rushing over in a flurry of dark flapping wings that catch the light at odd angles. As one of them lands on her arm, pecking in annoyance at her closed fist, hoping for some hidden delicacy, there's a slight jolt somewhere in the back of her mind. Familiarity that doesn't quite fit right. Some life long gone whispers  _ I remember this  _ as she turns her hand over and opens her palm. 

It is something the Well has been teaching her over these last few days; the memories of a life involve more than simple tactical knowledge. While there are vague sunny memories of her own life in the Denerim alienage, of leaving crumbs in the twisting roots of the vhenadahl, it is deeper than that -- Someone, some  _ other _ guardian of Mythal, now long dead, once held a bird just as cautiously and caringly as she does now.

And, Arravir has also realized, she is sometimes, without prompting, able to listen to a voice from the Well above the others, to focus on a whisper and draw it out, at least for a few moments. Some manifest that sorrow of the Well's name, with memories that sprint on their last breaths to claw on the wall of her consciousness. Rusty blood, ash, collapse. She wonders if she has felt the immediate fallout of Mythal's betrayal. 

Not all are so catastrophic, however. Images of a thousand long-dead places have waltzed through her mind, many of them leisurely, as if the song they danced to had only carried on without ever fraying. There is often something detached from these, like some  _ piece  _ is missing, but she yearns for it all the same. 

So many of these memories know nothing of decay. And that makes her cry again, more than the stories that know too much of endings. 

Back in this moment, in the rookery of Skyhold, a bird steps on her foot and waddles across it with wings partially extended. It nearly pounces on a piece of bread by her other foot and swallows it whole. She smiles as she ties her letter to the leg of the bird still pecking at her closed fist.

Making her way carefully, quietly down the old stairs, she hopes to slip by Solas, to maybe catch a glimpse of him painting, at peace with his simple brush, and not have to find the energy to produce words. They have not spoken since they all fell out of Morrigan’s Eluvian. Though she knows that they must, she hopes to delay the inevitable fallout. 

She has no such luck. He is waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, looking expectant. There have been many days she was pleased to see him anticipating her arrival, and they would speak of magic and spirits for hours on end, or he would help her with her grammar in elvhen. Now, she stops, three stairs up, and swallows hard.

“Yes?” she asks.

“Lethallin,” he says, “You cannot keep running.”

“I’m not running, Solas. I simply haven’t desired your company.” Storming past him, Arravir walks to the middle of the rotunda before something makes her pause. She glances at the tomes on his desk rather than back at him, aching to run a hand along the spine and ask him of it, as they always have done, as if nothing has changed.

He catches up to her. “I begged you not to drink from the Well! Why could you not have listened?”

“Solas,” she says quietly. A warning.

“You gave yourself into the service of an ancient elven god!” He screams, more angry than she has ever heard him before. Even with his distaste or disgust in the past, it had been a more simmering, witty condescension.

This is fury.

She can match that.

Spinning around, she points to her face, to the hours upon hours worth of tattoos that trace her discipline and her service to Mythal. “ _ I always have been, _ ” she spits. 

He quiets, but still seems to have the effect of talking over her. His piercing eyes are narrowed, his sharp jaw set. “You are Mythal’s creature now. Whatever you do, whether you know it or not, will be for her. You have given up a part of yourself.”

“That’s called  _ devotion, _ Solas,” Arravir rebuttals. “Just because  _ you _ see yourself above  _ loyalties _ doesn’t mean I do. I belong to Mythal and the Dalish, and you belong to no one.”

“You don’t know how right you are,” Solas says after a pause. There is a sadness that tinges his words, coloring them some deep and mourning color, like the dark pelt of a wolf in winter. “But I have told you, the elven gods were not what you think. They existed, but they were not  _ gods _ ! They —”

“If you cared so much you would try to learn with our People rather than tell us how wrong we are!” she says, growing louder as she speaks, words sparking with a finality. She feels ash on her palms though there has been no fire.

Then, she is racing for the exterior door across the room, hearing his practiced sigh behind her as she throws herself into the winds.

* * *

  
  
  


The door does not slam as loudly as half of her wishes that it did when she leaves, but she continues striding across the ice slicked stone bridge anyway, her breath fogging the air in a trail behind her. Arravir is not entirely sure what she is doing until she is in Cullen’s office, leaning against the closed door and slowly slipping down the heavy wood. 

Her legs brace to stop herself before she collapses completely, and she pushes some of her fallen hair behind her shoulder again. With a deep breath, she looks around, taking in the room for the first time in over a month. The torches need new kindling; she reasons that the staff have had no reason to clean and restock the office, as it is unlikely that more than a few people have passed through these doors for weeks now. 

The clutter on the desk is less than usual, since reports are all sent to his person...wherever exactly in the southwest of Orlais he is now. She smiles for a moment as she walks toward it, knowing others in his station would not bother with all reports and messages deemed “non essential” -- like some account of the training exercises at an outpost in the Western Approach last week, or a detailed breakdown of lumber from the last fortnight in the Storm Coast. Some other Commander, in a battle on the scale of theirs in the Arbor Wilds, would order that those lesser updates and requests be left waiting at Skyhold to be reviewed at a later date. But, knowing Cullen, she realizes that he would call  _ every _ report essential, even in circumstances this dire.

_ That last night they had shared together in his tent at the base camp in the Arbor Wilds, Arravir woke up at some early hour before even the slightest twinges of sunlight were visible. It was nothing alarming that jolted her awake, just one of those unconscious feelings that something was just slightly off, indescribably unbalanced.  _

_ His warmth was gone. She rolled over to see him sitting up beside her, hunched over a report by the light of a single dim candle. She made a small noise unconsciously at the back of her throat as she rubbed the sleep from her heavy eyes. Processing, she swallowed, relearning her mouth and words, sleep having made a fool of her. Finally, she said, “Vhenan, if this was important enough to be awake for, you would have woken me.” _

_ It took him a few moments to drag his eyes away from the parchment. Much of his body was obscured in the shadows, but his face was clear enough that she saw him blink rapidly before turning to her. “Sorry, did the light wake you? I can --” _

_ “You can _ sleep. _ ” Arravir raised a hand a few inches above her face and, twirling it once and then rearing it back as though stung, the flame from the candle suddenly shot backwards and into her open palm. Closing her fist around it, the light vanished and the darkness settled around the two of them. _

_ Before he could say anything, she grabbed his bare arm and gave a gentle tug.  _

_ He let out a sigh that turned into a laugh as he obliged and fell into the bedroll beside her again, his arm wrapping around her middle. With the weight of him beside her once more, she closed her eyes and gripped his forearm tightly. And then, she fell asleep almost instantly. _

In the present, Arravir finds that she has sat down in his chair. It had been pushed out from the desk deliberately, as though he had only just risen from it...or pulled it out for her to sit.

Some floorboard above her creaks, and though she knows it is only the ancient fortress settling in the wind, some small part of her whispers that it is his footsteps, that he is just in the other room. Shaking her head, she winces as the action causes a dull throbbing pain to knock at the back of her skull. The Well’s voices wrap around her for a moment, just as Cullen’s arms had weeks ago.

Pulling her legs up to her chest and bringing her coat around them, she rests her forehead against her knees, and does all that she knows how to do: She counts her breaths as the minutes start to stick together in the empty, cold silence.

* * *

  
  
  


What must be an hour later, Arravir walks out one of the side doors and onto the battlements. There are a few unlucky workers shoveling snow off of the walkway some fifteen feet ahead of her. The dirty piles of it are clumped unceremoniously along the walls, keeping the center of the path clear.

Then, she hears a noise rise up from somewhere below -- a shout? Nearly slipping on a patch of ice, she hurries to the edge and looks down, gloved fists clenching, ready to summon her reliable flames. 

And what she sees makes her feel foolish for her alarm. There is a group of refugee children bundled up and racing through the snow, sometimes falling or sinking in soft patches. A woman who is taller — though not by much — trails behind them, shouting and laughing. She has thick bouncy curls that pop out from under the hood she has pulled over her head. Arravir thinks she recognizes her as one of the staff members around Skyhold. 

Suddenly transfixed, she leans over the stone wall and watches for a few minutes as the children laugh and duck out of the way of scouts and maids and stablehands (with few mounts to look after these days some of them just seem to wander to fill the time) who scurry through the open space. The children and the woman with them seem to be alternating between many different games before breaking out into an outright snowball fight. Arravir stares curiously at the group of children — humans and elves and even a portly young dwarf — shrieking and playing together in this public space, seeming to live joyously despite Corypheus, despite the centuries of subjugation between these peoples. 

She wonders if such a group exists anywhere else in Ferelden, anywhere else in Thedas. This will not solve every problem of her people, but...it is something, isn’t it? It’s something almost uncomfortable despite its goodness, when she thinks of the rare days in Denerim when she would brave the markets outside the Alienage and she would see a human child her age who would look at her curiously or, worse, deride her openly. On the rare occasion a human child would try to talk kindly to her, they would be dragged away by a seething parent. 

_ Her old friend Tabris, who had more freedom than Arravir — then Lyra — because she was not secretly an apostate, came back from other regions of the city sometimes gushing of story after story after story. She had perfected the art of sneaking in and out undetected, and met so many people. Some were fine. But there were some human kids in the southern part of the city who she had gotten along with for a while, until one day she showed up and they all pretended they did not know her. They had called for a guard but Tabris had slipped into an alleyway before she could be caught. _

_ When Lyra had told that story to her father one night, he was unsurprised. He looked at her with pity in his eyes, but a kind of toughness in his brow. And he told her that so many human children learned bigotry young. It didn’t make sense, but it was what they lived with.  _

_ She had been nine at the time, unable to take in the magnitude of his words. He had leaned down then and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. “But we do watch out for each other here, Lyra. And most humans leave us alone, which is just how we like it.” _

_ “We do?” She had asked. _

_ Her father had laughed. “Of course.We don’t want any smelly humans around here, do we?”  _

_ She had contorted her face in disgust, as though the odor he implied was right beneath her nose, and then she had collapsed into giggles. In all of her youthfulness, it was enough of an answer for her.  _

_ “Do the humans you work for smell, papa?” _

_ “Every single one!” he had joked with a wink, standing to gather a bucket and head for the door to retrieve them more water for their stuffy, dilapidated space. _

Back in the present, the short redhead woman collapses into a steep snowbank by one of the stone walls, clutching at her chest with one hand. Arravir watches her, brows narrowing in concern as she hears the woman’s faint wailing as the children all run towards her. And then, right as a small blonde child leans over her, the woman strikes them in the face with a snowball she had been hiding in her other hand. Immediately, she leaps to her feet and throws her arms in the air with a triumphant yell. Three of the children run forward and tackle her down into the snowbank again.

Before she is even fully conscious of it, Arravir is walking with haste down the slippery steps to the courtyard, watching them with curiosity. Hovering by the bottom step, she hesitates to move forward and disturb the fun, but the woman locks eyes with her.

“Ceasefire!” She calls, and all the children drop their snowballs and salute with a kind of discipline and solemnity. Arravir looks at the small crowd in confusion and amusement as the other woman bounds over to her. She is curvy with light brown skin dotted with so many freckles that Arravir imagines bards trying to write songs about the constellations of them. When she smiles broadly there is a gap between her front teeth. And, to her great surprise, Arravir finds that the woman is even shorter than she is — though only by a couple inches.

“If only my own troops were so well trained,” Arravir says with a nod to the children behind her.

The woman lets out a hearty laugh. “These are nothing but ze finest troops in Orlais, Inquisitor!” She says with a dramatic, swooping bow. “And I am her lady Chantal Miska Anne Étiennette Mireille Renault. Don’t forget  _ l’accent aigu _ over ze premier ‘E’ — so many people do!”

There is something comical about this  _ lady Chantal’ _ s accent, like it is a Fereldan minstrel’s parody of a chevalier. Arravir raises an eyebrow. “You’re not Orlesian.”

Chantal places a hand over her mouth as she dramatically gasps. “‘Ow dare you! I am  _ half  _ Orlesian!” With another big laugh, her hood slips off, revealing the closely shaved sides of her head and the full extent of her ginger curls flopping down over her forehead. Then, in a muted Fereldan accent, she adds with a shrug: “Sharp wit, Inquisitor! You can call me Chance. Only my mum calls me ‘Chantal.’”

“Chance,” Arravir repeats slowly, confused about how the “Ch” in the moniker does not use the “sh” sound that the Orlesian tongue prefers. 

“The one and only!” She gives a cheeky grin, tongue pressed between the gap in her teeth. “But what did ya need me for, Inquisitor? Are we in your way?”

“Not at all,” Arravir replies. “I was simply watching. I didn’t mean to interrupt your game.” Behind them, a couple of the children are already throwing snowballs at each other’s faces, bored with their leader’s conversation. “But, I thought I recognized you — Do you work with Sera?”

“We have a mutual friend by the name of Jenny, if you know what I mean,” Chance says. “Started off around here on chamberpot duty, believe it or not. Couple other people left, but I spent the last few years before this Inquisition business in Kirkwall, so my standards aren’t high.” 

Before Arravir can even figure out how to respond, Chance plows forward. “I was almost recruited by that Sister Nightingale to be a Scout, but, well, I like it ‘round here, you know? I get to hang out with the kids, get to help their parents figure things out,  _ and _ — get this — I’m doing laundry now! Step up from chamber pots, right?”

“You...have an interesting perspective, Chance,” Arravir says hesitatingly, but she feels some of her earlier tension has left her body. “I’m glad you are here for the many displaced people at Skyhold.”

“Thanks, I get that a lot!” She beams and then shifts on her feet, as if trying to stand taller. “About the interesting perspectives, anyway. Don’t get thanked for my off-duty work much, though.  _ Especially _ not by Orlesians. Anyway, means a lot more coming from you.”

Arravir stills, feeling somehow that this woman’s high regard for her is more genuine than many other humans’ she’s met over the years. “I...you’re welcome, Chance.” She clears her throat, suddenly puzzled by something. “If you’re half Orlesian, are you also half Fereldan? Your accent is unmistakable.” She thinks of how recently still Ferelden was liberated from Orlesian control, and how few of such couples she has seen in her lifetime. And now they live in a fortress on the border between the two countries, she almost points out.

But Chance looks uncomfortable for the first time in their short conversation, eyes darting around nervously before batting a hand dismissively. “Yes and no! But...Story for another time! So…” She trails off, bending over to scoop up another snowball. “Wanna play, Inquisitor?”

The children seem to somehow all hear their leader and turn expectantly to Arravir. It’s an innocent moment, but for some reason she feels more pressure than when hundreds of troops assemble to get a look at her, to be even  _ touched  _ by her words. She wants to say no, to say  _ excuse me, I have to go.  _ After all these years of looking to survival, it’s hard for her to find the secret childish urges within her.

But she remembers all the days in the Alienage she couldn’t go out and play with the other kids, because her father was worried that during some game her still-uncontrolled magic may manifest. She remembers watching the children in clan Lavellan as a malnourished teenager, wishing she understood the rules of their games so she could just somehow join them while still slipping in, unnoticed, a part of the whole.

A gust of wind blows hard across her face, making the loose unbraided strands of her hair fly directionless about her. Something seems to whisper just behind her ear. Whether it is the Well or some lost version of herself, she does not care.

All she  _ does _ care about is her  _ aim _ as she slowly, clumsily packs some of the snow by her feet into a loose ball...and strikes Chance in the face with it.

* * *

  
  


A few days pass, and the weather gets marginally warmer, though Arravir’s moods still shift between apprehension and a loneliness that demands further isolation. She is sitting against an armchair in the library with Dorian when a breathless Scout bursts up the stairs looking around wildly for her. They lean against a bookshelf and half-shout, “Inquisitor! We’ve just heard word --The advisors are to be arriving within the hour!”

Trance-like, she nods, whispers in thanks, and closes the book she is holding. Arravir feels like the threat of words like Cassandra’s from her trusted advisors might swallow her whole. She needs this useless waiting to be over, and so she looks to Dorian as if for some sort of confirmation. He looks at her curiously. “Are you ready?”

As a way of answering, she quickly stands and heads briskly for the staircase down to the rotunda. Dorian calls after her, “You know when humans say ‘within the hour’ it doesn’t always mean literally in the next hour! Often it can mean ‘sometime today’! So we don’t have to wait outside —” There is the sound of stomping before he adds, “Alright, you’ve won, I’m coming!”

Arravir continues down the stairs and strides across the room towards the doorway into the main hall, passing by Solas on nearby scaffolding. She meets his watchful gaze for a moment before slipping out the door, pulling her coat tighter around her.

* * *

  
  
  


She and Dorian are leaning against the wall across from the main gate for the next half hour in the weak mid-afternoon light. Clouds keep obscuring the sun, casting them in shadow, but they hardly notice. They are discussing animatedly the various ancient magics they’ve read about and what could have created the atmospheric effects in the Arbor Wilds. Having such conversations makes her feel the most normal she has in weeks, maybe months, since they first left for the region all that time ago. And this is a point they have both been mystified over, rallying various theories about it back and forth to no avail. It simply has a radius of effect so large and yet with so gradual a transition that neither of them can draw up any answers. Arravir feels that there is an explanation in her subconscious now that she can coax out of the knowledge of the Vir’abelasan, but it eludes her like a word caught on the tip of her tongue. 

“It’s not preserved in time, or else those ruins would not have  _ been _ ruins —”

“But it may still have  _ similarities _ to time magic, right? Time and space cannot exist without the other…”

“Hmm. You may be onto — Oh! There they are!” Dorian is cut off by a trumpet blaring and the raucous clatter of various bustling bodies. The whole courtyard seems to freeze and stand at attention before becoming busier than it has been in weeks. There are shouts as the gates are lifted, creaking in their icy joints, but not failing.

And then, he is there. 

Cullen comes riding into view at the head of the group, as stoic in command as he always is. Arravir steps forward unconsciously, huffing out a relieved breath into the chilly air as she sees he does not seem to be injured in any way. She wants to rush over to him, but all of the anxiety of the past few weeks claws at her feet like frostbite, pulling her into place.

Cullen pulls on the bridle when he is just inside the gate, causing his horse to jerk its head slightly before abruptly stopping. Looking down, he appears engaged in a conversation with one of the stablehands who has rushed forward, pointing behind him to gesture at something. As they talk, Josephine and Leliana ride around them, looking weary but alert as they make their way slowly through the parting crowd. An eager stablehand takes the reins from Josephine, who gracefullu dismounts, pushing flyaway strands of hair behind her ears and adjusting the many delicate layers of her clothing. 

Arravir smiles at the familiar friendly sight, but assures herself she will speak with the other two women soon. Her eyes trail back to Cullen, who has dismounted his own horse and is untying something connected to the saddle, a lead to another mount that is still stubbornly refusing to cross over the threshold. Walking suddenly faster towards him, she sees a frantically braying, tossing horned head. The hart paws at the ground as Cullen and two others try to secure him, and Arravir breaks into a run.

“Da’ghilana!” she yells, almost losing her footing in the now-compacted snow as she dodges another horse being brought in. Cullen whips around immediately, hands going slack on the hart’s neck. 

She slows when she is only a few feet away, numb feet kicking up snow, and he smiles at her like she is the only thing in the world. It does something to ease the tension in her gut, and, slowly, all the fatigue of the last few weeks rising again within her, she smiles back, grateful. 

“It’s good to see you, Commander,” she says quietly, knowing they are not alone.

“Likewise, Inquisitor,” he replies in the same hushed tone. Then, he pauses, looking her over, almost scrutinizing her, mouth parting like he wants to say more, before Da’ghilana brays loudly between them, his voice unnaturally shrill.

Arravir’s eyes widen in surprise as she turns to him and steps more directly into his line of vision, reaching up to touch his face. “Da’ghilana,” she says loudly, stroking down his neck. “Aneth ara,” she says, kinder, repeating the motion. He snorts, puffing out huge foggy plumes from his flared nostrils.

Suddenly, he sways his large head and several of the stablehands have to duck out of the way of his antlers. Pressing his bony cheek to Arravir's shoulder, he huffs out another angry breath. “Ar lath ma, ar lath ma, Da’ghilana,” she whispers, almost laughing as she reaches up to rub the white patch of fur that runs down the length of snout. “Ar lath ma.”

“He has been downright furious this whole trip without you,” Cullen says with a mixture of frustration and pure mirth. “And no one else could ride him, so I had to lead him behind my horse, though some days it felt more like  _ dragging _ him.”

  
  


“Ghi, we talked about this,” she says seriously to the hart, who is now attempting to scratch an itch against her arm, nearly raking her with his dark antlers in the process. She looks at the overwhelmed stablehands and says, “I’ll take him from here,” with a nod, dismissing them.

Then, she turns to Cullen. “Thank you for doing that. I know he is difficult.”

“It had to be done,” he says dismissively. “And...I can’t say I blame the poor creature for  _ missing _ you.”

Arravir almost giggles, she is caught so off guard. Holding his gaze a moment longer, she says, “I missed you, too.”

Again, he looks ready to say more, his expression clouded and serious, when she feels a slight tug on her arm and looks down to see Da’ghilana chewing on the sleeve of her coat, giving a slight yank as if hoping to rip it free of her. “Hey!” She says sternly, pulling it out from between his teeth. 

Gripping the reins tightly in her hands, she feels the anxiety of before spreading throughout her body, as if it is in her blood. There is suddenly something tangibly awkward in the air between them. Looking between Ghi and Cullen, she sighs, shifting from foot to foot, not knowing how much Cassandra or Morrigan have already told the other advisors of the Vi'’abelasan. In her own brief letters, she has not said anything in the hopes that explaining in person would make it all clearer.

Looking at him sadly, she sighs. “I’m sure you already know that we have more to discuss.” He nods, his expression still a mystery, like her view of him is obscured through a rain-streaked window. "Can we --" he begins, but Arravir cuts him off. 

She clears her throat, muscles tensing. “Then...I’ll see you in the War Room soon.”

He looks as if he is going to object, but stops himself, looking down at the ground before nodding again. 

She does not know how it all changed so quickly, how the air soured, but it happened. And she needs to compose herself before this meeting if she is to defend herself. 

So she walks off to the stables alone, silent beside a still-braying Da’ghilana 

  
  


* * *

They have been in the War Room for hours now, the already weak winter sun growing dimmer behind its veil of clouds outside. Servants have come in to light the torches in their braziers by the door. 

And they have all talked themselves in circles. Or, the humans have. Arravir feels like she has listened to them talk about her without deferring to -- or sometimes even asking for --- her input. Her head is throbbing with a headache again, and she braces the table in front of her for support, her knuckles whitening with the pressure.

They all debate the possible consequences of her choice shaking their heads and crossing their arms and talking on and on and on. They ask what kind of control Mythal has over her, or who she even is. It has been a long time since she felt so small.

Morrigan — finally in a place where Arravir has to converse with her again — skewers her for information, for every detail of what she understands. And when Arravir finally admits that she is not sure yet where their next step is, Morrigan swoops on her like a bird of prey.

“See? I am proven correct, if I had been the one to drink, we wouldn’t need to —”

“Enough!” Arravir yells, making Josephine jump slightly, adjusting her clipboard. “What’s done is done.  _ I _ drank. And  _ I _ will figure this out.” Turning slowly to look at the four of them gathered there, she makes eye contact with each of them before speaking again. “What are each of you here for? Are you all my advisors or my critics?”

There is no sound in the room for a few moments except the scratching of Josephine’s quill. 

Cullen, who has said little this entire time, though she has felt his persistent gaze, speaks. “Inquisitor, we are only concerned. We don’t know how to fulfill our duties as advisors when you made a decision that we know nothing about. There are no resources to even  _ begin _ to understand this Well, as all the elves you described abandoned the temple before our forces were able to secure the area.”

Arravir is shaking. “Thank you for your input, Commander,” she says icily. 

“We  _ are _ trying to help you,” he insists. She ignores it.

“My scouts have not even found a viable trail to track down this Abelas and the others,” Leliana speaks up, arms folded in frustration as she confirms Cullen’s words. “It is as though he disappeared, but there are few places they could go that they would have any luck blending in. They can’t avoid us for long.”

“Thank you, Spymaster,” Arravir says, trying to keep her voice even again. “But Abelas has committed no crime against us, he does not need to be hunted down. And I believe there is little he could tell us that he did not already.”

“As you wish, Inquisitor,” she says with hesitation. “Though I will at the very least track his location if he is spotted. It could be important to learning about other locations similar to this one, or…” she smirks darkly under her hood “learning his future goals.”

Arravir sighs, feeling slightly cornered into giving her an inch. “Fine. Do what you feel is necessary. Ambassador?”

Josephine perks up. “I do confess, Inquisitor, that I have been debating how to frame our objectives and our successes in the Arbor Wilds to our allies. No doubt they will be curious about what kind of upper hand we have against Corypheus, though I do not want to speak prematurely or too much and reveal our cards, so to speak.”

“They don’t need to know about the Vir’abelasan at all,” she replies shortly. “I don’t need to be questioned even more so by every noble I meet, and the Temple of Mythal does not need an Exalted March to plunder whatever riches remain there.”

“Very well, Inquisitor,” Josephine says, quickly noting her words down. “If you have not established good faith with our allies yet, then there is precious little more that could possibly be done.”

Arravir is taken aback by that, by the insinuation that they all should trust her by now. It is, of course, something she has believed, but she has rarely hoped to hear it echoed. Still, she feels the gnawing doubt that she has said to both her Ambassador and Spymaster the opposite of what they wished to hear. She wishes she had had more important news to share, that she had a location she could point to on the map before them and they could be charting a course forward. Instead, all she has had to offer is  _ please wait _ . 

And there seems to be an unspoken impatience brewing in the room. Arravir looks at all four of them again individually, feeling weighed down by the intensity of Cullen’s own stare. She knows he has more to say to her than he has said here, and she knows that she has things to say as well. 

“You’re all dismissed,” she says abruptly, and sees Morrigan raise an eyebrow at her across the table before sauntering for the door.

“When you find you need my help, Inquisitor...Come find me,” she says, opening it just a crack and slipping through. 

Josephine walks over to Leliana and begins conversing with her in hushed tones, seeming to be trying to rush the two of them out of the room. Though they hurry, it feels an eternity before they finally push open the heavy wood and leave the room, Josephine inclining her head politely.

  
  


* * *

  
  


And then, silence falls immediately like they are in some soundless, colorless void. Even the footsteps of the other three down the hall seem to dissipate in the dry winter air, as if they are worlds apart. It had been one of the least productive and uncomfortable meetings in her three years here. But facing him may be worse. Now it is just the two of them and the massive war table giving the illusion of whole countries between them.

Arravir is staring down at her clenched fists on the table in front of her. She can feel the steady gaze of Cullen’s eyes on her. 

He is positioned at a point along the table that is between her and the door. She does not know why she takes note of that fact. Like she had told Solas days before, she is not running away. But she thinks it anyway.

She closes her eyes to push the world away, and then clears her throat to disturb the unnatural stillness. "Whatever you are going to say now, I  _ promise _ I have already heard it from someone else."

Cullen's voice is cautious and clear, though not immediate. "Are you alright?"

"... I'm always alright." She lets out a shaky, choking breath, as though she has been struck. That...was not something she had already heard, she realizes, before forcing that thought down. 

"Arravir--" 

"I  _ have _ to be." She says it like a warning, back stiffening.

He shifts in her periphery, stepping closer to her. She does not move, but continues to stare down at the swooping edge of the table. As she runs a hand along the now smoothed-down curve, his voice cuts in, quiet but accusatory. "Then you are not yourself."

" _ Excuse me? _ " Her head jolts upward, searching out his face, eyes narrowed.

He looks pained, and that confuses her more. "The effects of this vir abe -- this  _ Well _ ... Can't you remember that it was  _ you  _ who told me to not always pretend I am fine? Arravir,  _ you  _ told me that during...during the worst of the withdrawals. I thought…” He starts to reach out to her, but then suddenly pulls his hand back, thinking otherwise. “Did you mean it?"

"I remember. I meant it.” Her voice is soft, barely above a whisper as she pushes away from the table and stands straighter. “You  _ know _ I always mean it."

He shakes his head slightly. "Then, Maker, why can't you say the same for yourself?"

"We are different people, Cullen!” She is half angry, half pleading, gesticulating with fervor. “Your struggles are not mine! You don't  _ understand _ my --"

"If I fail to understand what you are experiencing, it is because you are not  _ allowing  _ me to!" He winces, as if overwhelmed by the volume and sharpness of his own voice.

The silence returns then as they both breathe, steadying themselves. It has been years since a moment of stillness between them felt like violence. As the almost-forgotten dread of long days in the cold discomfort of Haven settles in her gut, she closes her eyes to try to leave the past alone in memory -- where it belongs

She crosses her arms. "Ask your questions, then."

He shrugs, glancing away. "Why did you do it?"

The anger is back almost instantly, white hot in her core. "Why  _ wouldn't  _ I? This is the history and knowledge of my  _ people,  _ Cullen."

"Yet it's more than that, isn't it?” He sighs and begins to pace, stopping in front of one of the room’s many tall windows and staring out at the endless grey of the sky. Raising a hand to his forehead, he rubs it absentmindedly, measuring out his words. “I don't pretend to understand how this works, but both you and Lady Morrigan admitted that this is more than just knowledge. This is...binding, a will --  _ control, _ Arravir.” As if emphasizing the point he turns away from the outside world again frustration, seeking her out. “Being controlled — How is  _ that  _ like you?"

"I’m not being controlled!” She practically screams it, hands flying to her face as they had when she had argued with Solas and even with Abelas, pointing out the devotion scrawled in ink there. She feels as if she has been pleading for someone to  _ really _ see her, and that she had been wishing it would be him. “I am in  _ service  _ to Mythal and to  _ my  _ gods. I  _ always  _ have been."

"How do you know this truly is Mythal? How can we start to guess at the effects of this, or…” Cullen’s voice drops lower, suddenly vulnerable. “How am I to be best prepared to help you? This risk --"

"My life has been at  _ risk  _ ever since I woke up in a cell in Haven with my hand glowing and the sky torn open.” Ripping off the glove on her left hand, Arravir exposes the mark that has haunted her in waking and in dreams for years now, brandishing it in front of her like it is her staff. It stings in the cold air, but she hardly notices. Tossing the glove behind her, she hears one of the small markers on the War Table clatter over, rolling pathetically over the geography of Ferelden. “That's what this  _ is.  _ That is what the Inquisition is supposed to  _ do. Take risks.  _ Is this ‘ _ risk’  _ different because it is related to  _ my _ gods and not yours?"

"Of course it's not, but you also did not receive the Anchor  _ willingly!"  _ He takes a step towards her, and she echoes the action, unblinking gaze not leaving his face.

"And I take  _ pride _ in the fact that the vir’abelasan  _ was  _ a choice I could make!” She is pressing her bare left hand to her chest now, feeling the rapid rising and falling of her heaving chest. “You will  _ never _ be able to imagine the feeling of standing over it, of standing before  _ thousands  _ of years, protected from the  _ fucking _ slaughter, reaching out to me…"

"You’re sure that this was your choice, not some...illusion of one?” he asks delicately. “Could you not resist?" 

Arravir’s blood freezes. She has never felt such a burning fury and such... _ cold  _ all at once. She has heard that those dying of frostbite feel like they are burning in the moments before death. Maybe she’s just been thrown into a snowbank and left there. Maybe all of these rejections are killing her.

“ _ Resist?”  _ Her voice is low but commanding, and when she repeats the word again, it swells with a wave of shock that crackles through her like a wild surge of magic.

“ _ Resist! _ ?” Then, the magic  _ does _ course through her, sparking in the space between her fingers. Cullen’s eyes dart down from her face to her hands for a moment in concern, but she is already balling her hands into fists and breathing deeply, dispelling the magic like she is blowing out a candle. If only to show him how  _ in control _ she is. 

The two of them have come so far from the biting words of fear that marked the beginning of their acquaintance. He is a completely different man from the one she met three years ago. Arravir knows this, but it feels like a sharpened blade sits between them. The ground is littered with splintered iron.

What if it always has been? What if she only now sees her own bloodied soles?

What if...despite it all, despite...despite the  _ love _ , it’s not enough, and these humans never will make the space to truly know her? She feels her eyes go wide. 

“Resist!” She swallows, eyes stinging, and she furiously rubs the back of her hand across them. “I ‘couldn’t resist,’ like..like some abomination?”

"No! Maker, no --" Cullen sounds panicked, but she is not looking at him.

"I couldn’t resist!” She laughs humorlessly, stalking towards the door, wishing with each step she was gone from Skyhold, gone from all of it, and that she could be sitting by a chattering creek with the Keeper. “Is this what you think of my judgment?"

"No! I'm only  _ worried _ — Arravi r, _ please! _ " He is begging, his footsteps pounding behind her, and the tears are spilling down her cheeks again ruthlessly as some small part of her heart prays for a stoicism she will never truly have.

Yanking the door open, she steps through, and whips around to face him one last time. Despite the tears, she levels him with the heaviest gaze she can manage and asks, voice hollow:

".. _.Did I fail my Harrowing, Knight Commander? _ ”

And the door rumbles shut behind her. 

And she is gone before he can even scramble for the handle.


	7. The Reminiscing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy D4 Day! 
> 
> Content warning for this chapter: There is a short description of violence, as well as a moment of (fictional) racialized language (towards elves).

**TEN MONTHS EARLIER**

“I climbed a trellis in the garden earlier,” Arravir said lightly. Her eyes were closed and her head was resting against Cullen’s chest as they swayed more than danced, just barely clinging onto the rhythm of the musicians from the ballroom that had died down long before with one dramatic final chord hanging in the cool night air before blowing itself out. “I should tell Josephine that I _did_ have a reason for refusing the hoop skirt she insisted I wore tonight.”

The conversation was suddenly coming easily, when words had mostly escaped her ever since emerging from the gasping, clawing ballroom with the hawk-like eyes of the elite boring down at her. Arravir had held firm, and then, as soon as Morrigan has left her company, she had imagined some gaudy mask falling from her own face and splintering on the ground, taking her voice with it. Then, she had slumped against Cullen in complete silence for several minutes before finding words -- and, more importantly, a dance.

“Our Lady Ambassador is capable of a great many things, but even she can’t work miracles,” Cullen replied fondly, his hand on her waist moving absentmindedly, as if memorizing the shape of her. 

“I would have torn the frame of the skirt out as soon as I needed to actually _move_ ,” She said, voice serious, but with a small smile on her lips.

“I don’t doubt that. And...Do I dare to ask if that’s what happened to your shoes?” 

“They’re currently in a planter box in the garden. Near where Dorian sat himself for the night.” Arravir huffed out a tired laugh then, her bare feet knocking against his. When they had first begun dancing some time ago, he had kept stepping on her toes until he suddenly stopped them both and began removing his boots and socks -- an unnecessary part, though he said it was to match her -- in order to avoid any foolish injuries. It was a simple, almost silly gesture, but in the newness of their relationship, it was a comfort that reassured her of the rightness of her choice.

“It’s likely not the strangest thing to end up there after one of these wretched balls,” Cullen said exasperatedly. “I can’t begin to tell you all the strange things I overheard -- or was _forced_ to hear all night.” Her eyes were still closed, but she could imagine the scowl overtaking his face. She squeezed his gloved hand in hers, knowing all the strangling branches of fear that tangled around him, and how much of it was from the discomfort these Orlesians had put him in. It was so _invasive._ He was good at hiding it, but one of the many times she had passed by him at the night’s beginning, she had recognized the terror in his eyes and elbowed her way through the small crowd of lace and silk and sharp glittering masks covering hungry smiles that had amassed around him. She had taken his hand as subtly as she could amidst the Orlesian vultures. And she had calmed him down before slipping away again into the glittering, high-ceilinged ballroom.

“We’re never coming back here again,” She reassured him, standing on tip toes on her numb feet to better move her arm pressed against his chest all the way up and around his neck. He leaned down ever so slightly and into her tighter embrace. Though his face had more color now than it had at the worst of the withdrawals, his pale skin stood out somewhat boldly in the moonlight as he pressed his forehead into her shoulder. “And should any of these nobles come to Skyhold and ask for you, I’ll make it _abundantly_ clear that you are not available.”

Cullen didn’t answer at first aside from his hand gently squeezing hers back. They swayed in silence for a few precious moments before she felt his lips press tenderly against her forehead. She made a noise of contentment somewhere at the back of her throat. 

“The problem still remains that _you_ would have to speak to them,” he said finally. A small gust of wind picked up suddenly, fluttering through the manicured hedges of the entrance below, and Arravir pushed herself even closer against him as a chill ran through her body.

“Are you cold? Shall we return inside?” He asked immediately.

“Definitely not,” She stated firmly, exaggerating the amount she swayed as if to prove how much she was still involved in this not-dance of theirs. Arravir looked into the distance. Beyond his arms and the stone railing some five feet away, and past still the loud drunk voices that carried up from below, beyond even the gates to the Winter Palace, were the stars. They painted their eternal pictures even here, dappled the dark purple sky as it dove over some precipice in the distance and into blackness. They shone even in this gaudy splendor that perched pretentiously above the ruins of her own people at Halamshiral. It had always puzzled her the way they shined everywhere, even the alienage, and even, she guessed, out the small windows of a Circle Tower. Somehow, it didn’t feel right that all of nature could go on pretending they were not illuminating fields of blood.

Taking a deep breath, she stilled herself, knowing that her thoughts had wandered too far. But at the same time, she felt caught on the musing, stuck like her own dress had been on part of that garden trellis earlier before it had torn. Her dress -- a remarkable emerald green -- had flown around her so elegantly at the beginning of the ball, but now it was torn in several places and splattered with blood -- both her own and of those who had foolishly tried to stand against her. The duchess’ body may still have been growing cold on the ballroom floor.

Arravir didn’t fully know why the state of her dress bothered her so much, when they had come out victorious, the majority of the Orlesian court willing to follow the Inquisition. That was the goal of the night. It was just a dress she never intended to wear again. And yet, another chill ran through her body, less from cold this time and more from some large, clumsy feeling that seemed to float around her before it finally settled somewhere in her gut. 

So rather than trying to run from the melancholy overtaking her, she stopped to examine the emotional wound. And there she found a sensation from earlier that was now coming unravelled: It was the bubbling, weightless feeling she had felt before sunset when she had stepped into the grand hall with her hair in its elaborate updo, her shoes not yet abandoned, and the light material of the dress seeming to glide in the warm flickering torchlight that twinkled from every direction like the night sky had been drawn down for them. For her.

She had wished she hadn’t been moved by something so frivolous as a gown, but it had been powerful enough to stir up some bright persistent memory written in the margins of her lonely childhood.

Arravir pulled her arm down from around his neck and took a step back. She looked down at herself. “This is silly.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t want to go inside yet because I am afraid it will... all crash down on me and I will lose the feeling.” The uncertainty in her own voice made her cringe as her back stiffened in his arms.

“I’m...not following. Lose what feeling?” His brows drew together seriously as they always did when he looked at her with purpose.

“It’s…being...” Sighing, she searched for the words. “Tonight is the second time in my life that I can ever remember feeling...beautiful.”

Something shifted then. Arravir felt her cheeks flush despite the stinging cold of the night air. She felt uncomfortably bare, but forced herself to look up at him with a kind of defensiveness that even she did not understand.

Cullen seemed at a loss for words, his head tilted slightly to the side as he continued to look at her intently. “You…” His hand at her waist brushed up her arm before gently cupping her face. Arravir froze a moment before settling into the touch, and his thumb lightly traced the jagged scar that cut down her cheek. His hands were rough and combat worn, but his touch was so feather light it made her shiver. "You...you were the most beautiful woman in this palace tonight.”

She felt her face contort in skepticism as a heat bloomed even stronger in her cheeks and reached the tips of her ears. Clearing her throat, she replied awkwardly, “With all due respect...I can’t imagine that was a difficult competition considering the... _personalities_ of the other women here.”

Cullen chuckled fondly. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to work harder to convince you.” 

Arravir covered his hand on her cheek with her own and closed her eyes again. “Yes, you will.” Kissing his palm, she tried to laugh, chest still heavy so the sound came out dragging. “And I suppose that after tonight you _don’t_ want to hear how handsome _you_ are. Even if it is true.”

“It’s...different if it’s from you.” There was some mixture of nervous sincerity as his hand fidgeted on her face, seeming unsure of whether to grab hers or not. Arravir opened her eyes to take it in; she savored these moments of apprehension: they were honest and unsure, and so very unlike him in every other aspect of his life. Cullen was decisive in every action, even if it meant turning sharply against his own past choices. But here, with her, he stumbled. It wasn’t just these words; _everything_ was different with her. 

They were no longer even swaying in their half-dance, feet instead rooted to the stone of the balcony, gaze held by each other’s. Arravir smiled. In all the ways he was different with her, she was different with him, too. After a lifetime of holding everything in a fist so tight she did not know how to open it...with him she wanted to share.

“Can I...tell you about the first time? That I felt...beautiful, I mean,” She asked quietly, clumsily. 

“Of course,” his reply was almost diligent, with a solid nod. 

She nodded in response, stiffly, still uncertain herself about how to voice what she had tried for so long to silence. Removing her hands from his, she turned abruptly and walked over to the railing, staring out over the gardens below. Each step left a sharp pain in her soles, sore from all the climbing and fighting, a pain heightened by the biting cold of the stone. She stood on the tips of her toes, crossing her arms around her middle as she waited for him to join her.

When she felt his warmth beside her, she cautiously leaned toward him, messy hair coming out of its once-elaborate style pressing against his arm for the briefest moment before she straightened again. “It’s…” Arravir took a deep breath. “I can’t remember how old I was. Nine or ten. Creators, why can’t I remember?” She shook her head. “But every spring in the alienage we would hold a festival. Everyone who could afford to would stay home from their labors, no matter what consequences would come the next day. There was dancing and music around the vhenadahl, games and stories told by the hahren...Some people would work all year on things to sell at the festival.”

Her hands fidgeted with the torn cloth around her waist and came to rest on the stone railing in front of her as her jaw trembled. “Winters were hard there, in the alienage. Work grew more scarce along the docks, and illnesses swept through every year. People _died_ . Papa --” She caught herself, felt her stomach churning at the word she had not used in two decades. _“My father,”_ she corrected, “he told me growing up that that was how my mother died.”

Cullen’s hand delicately, cautiously pressed on her upper back then, a wordless comfort. She let the words hang in the air still full of a distant, faded drunken revelry from the ballroom.

“I remember…” he began after a long moment. He had that strange combination of both strain and youthfulness that he always had about him when he spoke of his childhood. “There was a year that a fever swept through Honnleath. Several children I knew never fully recovered, losing sight or hearing to it. But we were a small, open village, so I can only imagine that a space as cramped as an alienage must have only worsened the spread.”

Arravir nodded, trembling slightly with the memory of being six or seven and trying clumsily to nurse her feverish father back to health one winter. She remembered trying to make ice with her hands to press to his sweating brow, which, though his skin had always taken a paler hue than hers, was dangerously white then. But she understood little of her magic beyond the fire. And so she couldn’t do it. The only thing she could do with her small untrained hands was burn, touch hot as simmering coals that made him cry out until she decided that the best thing she could do was not touch him at all.

“So...we had reason to celebrate spring,” she pressed on. “And we did. It was my favorite part of the year, and not just because I was born in the spring months. My father let me join the festivities, when usually he was so protective. But…” A sheepish grin spread across her face. “Many of the adults made sure every year that all the children had new outfits for the festival. Everyone was dressed so colorfully -- oranges and pinks and...the colors of _spring_ \-- and my father and a few of our neighbors had worked to make me a dress. It was unlike any other one I had owned.” 

Arravir looked down at the torn gown wrapped delicately around her frame again, with its slits at the side, revealing her legs, and sprawling with the intricate embroidery of dalish designs. “I don’t need to tell you that bright dyes are expensive. But somehow people got their hands on the ingredients to make simple dyes themselves.” She trailed off. “I never found out exactly how they made them. But I remember seeing so many women with fingers dyed bright as berries for weeks around that time every year. The dress they gave me was almost violet, though of course the color was sort of uneven across the fabric. And they wrapped a bow around my waist. It was...teal, I think?” 

She paused, tracing designs in the grooves between stones with her finger absentmindedly. “Maybe if I were to see it now, after all the _fucking_ excess of these Orlesians, that dress would be so simple in comparison, but...Creators, at the time...it was _everything._ ” She laughed, shaking off the nervous energy. “Reegan -- _Warden-Commander_ Tabris...She put flowers in my hair and she dragged me towards the vhenadahl, and we just danced and danced in circles. For hours. My purple dress and my flowers and the sun was shining, and…” 

Her mouth twisted to the side as she clenched her jaw in pain. Her eyes prickled uncomfortably as tears started to form. “It truly was the best day of my life. I wasn't hiding, I was dancing, and I was _seen_ and admired. I felt _untouchable_.”

"I would have liked to see that,” Cullen said warmly, his hand on her back travelling to her shoulder. When she looked up to him, there was a small smile pulling at his mouth. As his eyes searched hers, something in his posture fell almost imperceptibly. The smile grew slack as he seemed to be considering his words. “Though my duties sometimes took me to the alienage in Kirkwall, I’m ashamed to admit that I know very little about the people there. I certainly wasn’t looking to expand my worldview during those years, only _narrow_ it.” With an almost angry shake of his head, he added, “It’s possible that they have similar celebrations in Kirkwall, though I know nothing of it.”

Arravir pressed herself closer to his side as her hands gripped the railing in front of her tighter. “I don’t know if different alienages have similar customs, either. And the one at Halamshiral was…” Her hands balled into fists, the magic surging through her tense forearms. Her emotions sped at her too fast for her to pin a single one down and name it.

And yet, as she felt his steady breathing, she somehow knew what she wanted to say, and a heat like that of all her fiery magic, but with none of the hunger, settled in her core. Gentleness overtook her. There would be time -- no, she would _make_ time -- for justice later. For now, she would be still with him. “You care to know now,” she said. “That’s not nothing.”

He let out a short huff of breath, as though unsure whether or not to laugh. His hand on her shoulder tightened, fondly rubbing circles across the exposed skin there. “You are far more gracious than I deserve.”

“If that were true, I wouldn’t be here right now,” Arravir said simply, bluntly. It was true; if she did not believe him to be truly working towards self-betterment, she never would have found herself in his arms. “And you know me, so you know I mean that.”

“That I do.” His voice carried lightly in the still-persistent gusts of wind. 

A couple minutes passed by in near-silence with all the fatigue of the day settling in her back and arms and feet with their pulsing dull aches. A tumble with an assassin in the gardens had thrown her back against a planter, and now she felt the brunt force of it. Florianne’s smug, clipped voice in her supposed triumph echoed in her ears, gloating right up until the moment she choked on her own blood. That sound would be even more difficult to extricate from her consciousness. 

Arravir thought again of the music they had played in Denerim during spring, of the cheering and drunken folks singing three different sets of lyrics whose meanings hardly coincided, but it did not matter to them. “Many humans have this image of elves in the city as always dirty and joyless, just...crushed by their circumstances.” Too many instances to count pushed towards the front of her awareness, making it hard to breathe. “But we never were any of those things, not entirely. We watched out for each other, we supported each other.”

“You _made_ things to celebrate each year,” Cullen said thoughtfully. “Despite it all. That’s...admirable, to say the least.”

Wordlessly, she buried her face in the thick red fabric at his side, feeling so vulnerable and small once again. His hand was in her hair then, caught in the disheveled style loosely pinned together. Arravir reached up to her head as well and gave a yank that ripped more of the strands of her hair out. He laughed, then she felt his fingers discover one of the pins and pause.

“May I?” He asked. 

“Please,” Was her reply, muffled as she spoke into his suit.

And so he slowly helped finally undo the formal updo with its bun and various braids, the gentle curls of her hair falling past her waist. He had to ask her to move her head to the left or to the right, and she silently complied, eyes closed again as she clung onto him like he was a tether to the world. 

Then, she stepped back and pushed a strand of her hair over her shoulder and out of her face. Her fingers paused for the briefest moment over the scar on her cheek again before she looked up as if expecting something.

Cullen’s gaze was soft as he took her in once more, as though she had just walked through the palace gates for the first time, as if she wasn’t some battle-worn mess. He ran a hand through his own blond curls, eyes wide. “Maker’s breath,” he said quietly. 

She laughed nervously, face twitching into a smile.

“Do you think that you could ever feel as beautiful again as you did earlier tonight, or during that spring festival?” He asked, turning his body completely away from the railing of the balcony. She had his full attention.

Arravir practically bounced on her cold bare feet as she was suddenly grinning, swept away in a fantasy that had suddenly seized her. She extended her arm out to him as he had to her an hour or so ago, the dark skin of her arm glowing as if kissed by the moon.

“Maybe,” she replied cheekily as he bowed, smirking, and kissed her palm. “If you spin me again.” 

  
  


* * *

**PRESENT DAY**

After running from the War Room, Arravir bursts into the main hall, vision blurry as she continues to push herself as fast as she can. She has no direction but away. She wants no one to touch her, to speak to her, to even look at her.

She nearly crashes into Varric, and chokes out something approximating an apology as she then stumbles out the main doors. She does not know if Cullen is following her, but she will not speak to him if he does. Her chest is heaving with such effort she feels that she may choke on her heart.

But then, the world seems to slow as the guards on either side of the enormous entryway salute her rigidly, dutifully.

“Your Worship,” one of them says, but the other falters, clearly perplexed by her exhausted, tearful appearance.

Realizing -- with a dawning horror -- how many eyes are still on her, how she cannot even cry or scream without someone interpreting it as some kind of symbolic gesture representing either all of the elves in Thedas or that Andraste herself...In their eyes, her behavior is never just her own. So she takes a deep breath. She nods at the guards respectfully. 

She walks steadily.

She monitors the rage and terror that sit in the spaces between her bones.

She keeps her tear-stained face neutral. And she moves at a pace approximating leisure.

The sun, though obscured the entire day, has begun to set, leaving the expansive courtyard muted in shadows. The fortress has come to life more than it had been in all those vacant days of waiting, and eyes are on her. 

At the bottom of the stone staircase leading into the entrance hall, she passes Cassandra again, who offers a greeting. Arravir returns it, gritting her jaw and remembering everything Vivienne has told her of making your face a mask, and everything Keeper Deshanna has told her of strength.

_Chin up, da’len. Eyes up. Stare down the world that would rather have you bow._

Arravir paces the battlements. She walks through the mage tower, quietly surveying those who have returned from -- or did not leave for -- the Arbor Wilds. She does not speak, but she does not shy away from making herself known, either.

And finally, night sits heavily on the mountains, but with clouds so thick still that they have suffocated the stars. It makes Arravir feel more lonely.

* * *

She ends up on the top floor of the tavern, where there are no torches lit and no braziers to hold them, so she is cast in quiet, dramatic shadows. Sitting down against the wooden bars of the railing, she looks down through the slats to the floors below. The minstrel plays her songs, and somewhere out of sight Iron Bull and the Chargers sing loudly, drunkenly, though they clearly do not know the words. Arravir has not seen Bull since he returned to Skyhold -- which she assumes must have been today, some time after the advisors -- but she nearly recoils at the thought of him seeing her so...crushed.

She _is_ crushed by this all, isn’t she? The word seems to sting with the intensity of a hornet, but it feels like the right name. Cullen’s words still claw at her, still echo in her ears with all the scraping sounds of a sword being sharpened:

_Could you not resist?_

The tears return, bitter and hot as she slumps across the bars, face pressing into them awkwardly. One hand closes around his coin still on its chain. The other hand taps restlessly against the bar beside her knee. 

Part of her thinks that she is not being fair, that she had gone into the whole discussion with the advisors already defensive, already prepared to fight. But another part of her thinks that she is not being vindictive _enough_ for all that she has suffered through these past three years. That has not all been due to Cullen, she knows, but she can only return to the sternness of his tone and the prodding nature of his questions. 

He had doubted her. 

Her mind continues to hunt itself down, to run itself into a corner and demand answers or justice or guilt. She can never decide which. Despite the cold, she is sweating. Her throat is tight.

And then, a voice calls behind her, high and clear, like a curious songbird bearing its lyrical news. "Arravir, you are hurting."

She jumps slightly, pushing her head away from the railing to look around. Sniffling, she looks up to see the pale, gaunt young man who has become more sure of his form over the years. His hair has even started to grow, further and further down in front of his eyes. But he has not abandoned his beloved hat. 

Arravir clears her throat. "Cole? I haven't seen you in...weeks, I think. How are you?

He sits down a few feet away from her, leaving room for the both of them. His movements have become so... _human;_ he braces himself with one hand behind him as he gets adjusted, seeming so cognizant of all of his limbs in a way he had not been even a year ago. "I am... learning. So many things. Thank you for asking.” He tilts his head to the side thoughtfully, considering something. “I was needed in that old forest. There were many people dying without a hand to hold, like Cole did." His mouth pulls into a pout then, and it plunges them both into silence. Arravir shifts her position, dangling her legs between the bars in the railing. Cole’s voice is somehow even quieter when he speaks again. "You held his hand."

Arravir first thinks he means the boy Cole’s hand, when she has never been in a Circle, let alone the White Spire. But she has learned something of how Cole’s thoughts are threads in some embroidery she cannot quiet understand. So she traces this single stitch, and then realizes his meaning with a chill. "...Reginald Sanders' hand. The soldier in the Wilds before we made it to the Temple. Yes, I remember.” She glances towards her companion, knowing for his sake that she should clearly state what she needs. “But I don't want to talk about that."

Cole presses on though, as he sometimes does when he has questions that will not leave him alone. "It made him happy you were there. But you were...not _just_ you. Or you were you, but not you. That bigger you. The glowing one. So many people see this bigger you, Arravir. Who is she?"

She lets out some involuntary noise, something close to a whimper. She knows he means the one who has walked twice out of the Beyond, the one who walks beside the Maker that she does not believe in. "I don't even know that person, Cole. I wish everyone would _stop_ imagining her, that fabled, heroic _Herald of Andraste. It's -- it's --"_ She is shaking again, unable to choke out the rest of the words. 

There is horror in Cole’s voice. _"_ I brought back the pain. I'm sorry. I wanted to ask you questions, find the hurt, not give you more."

"It's not your fault, Cole,” she says, giving him a watery smile. “I feel like all I can do these days is cry."

"That's not right.” There is something humorously matter-of-fact about his voice. “You are sitting, too. And talking with me."

A large peal of laughter reaches up to the rafters as some scratchy, pitchy voice attempts to harmonize with the bard in a grating falsetto. After a few moments, Arravir realizes it is Iron Bull, goaded by the Chargers. Krem, however, seems to be trying fruitlessly to quiet the others down, staring at the unbothered bard with a kind of enamored urgency. 

Arravir shakes herself and looks back to Cole. "I...Yes, I am. You're right.” She nods as if to remind herself of the action. “I also want to just...listen"

"Listen to who? There are so many voices, Arravir."

"We can leave the tavern if you'd like, Cole," Arravir replies kindly. She understands how overwhelming the dissonant cacophony of voices can be, and how much more so they must be for Cole, who not only hears but _feels_ them, all of them, simultaneously. Similar to the voices of the vir'abelasan in her own mind now.

"No, the voices are not here.” His voice halts, dipping lower. He is toying with a loose thread on the side of his signature beige shirt. “They are _in_ you. They're in so much pain. But they're all dead. I can't help them."

"Neither can I." She says it firmly, but feels the tears welling up again. Suddenly dizzy, she looks down again. Crossing the room to the bar she notices the short woman from the snowball fight the other day -- what had her name been, Chance? -- with her wiry ginger hair bobbing joyously as she sways to the music. The whole room below them is bursting to the seams with life; Arravir imagines it spilling out into the courtyard from every open window or every crack of the front door as another weary soul slips in. And yet, sitting so high above them, unnoticed by everyone except a spirit, she feels so separate from it. 

"But your voice is the loudest, Arravir,” Cole says insistently, like he has just heard her thought, “like a bell that rings to crack open the day. Like the voice of the hahren holding your world closer than metal bars ever could. The sun waits even for you. Hands holding and voices cracking and arms wrapped tightly...there are so many you _do_ help. Not dead. Living."

"That doesn't change how many have died,” Arravir bites back, harsher than she means to. “Or how much my people have suffered for centuries."

"You think your anger is not for yourself. The fire stirs for all the sorrow that guides your path. Solas thinks that his passion is for others, too. But he is wrong. He searches and longs for a path through dreams, yearning for every whisper. He does not know that the whispers are echoes of his voice."

Arravir pauses, thrown off by the comparison, but still curious at what Cole is getting at. "Solas and I are not the same, Cole."

"Not the same...no, I don't think so.” Cole pulls his feet towards him and rocks back and forth absentmindedly as he speaks, the wide brim of his hat bumping into the railing. “Solas' burning is cold, like metal left in the snow. It sticks to you and you pull and pull. The separating is painful. Sharp as a fang dripping with blood. But _you_ burn so hot, Arravir, warming but no one can _touch_ you. Reaching through the fire hoping to leash it, but only coming away burned."

"If anyone wants to _control_ me, they deserve to get burned." She is barely holding back the flames again, taking deep, practiced breaths to quell the surging heat within her. 

"They want to use that bigger you, make her their puppet and talk with her voice. They want to hurt people.” There is palpable disgust in his soft voice before he suddenly tilts his head and smiles. “But...not all of them. There are some who want to tear through the flickering firelight of that bigger you, to let those stars blink out. They haven't even named the constellation. They want to reach you just to hold on. Even if it burns."

"...Thank you, Cole.” He said “they” vaguely, but Arravir knows exactly who he means. And yet it all feels like _she_ is the one being burned. “I want...to think about that, but right now I just want...to sit. Is that okay?"

Cole pushes his legs through the gaps in the bars as well and swings them playfully in the dim light. That is his answer.

"I like sitting with you."

* * *

A few days pass. Arravir does not talk to Cullen once, containing herself mostly to her quarters and to the stables. Dorian comes by and shows his concern by leaving larger and larger piles of books he thinks she may have interest in. They stack up by her bedside, though she hardly sleeps.

But somehow, she and Cullen end up playing chess. It is another frigid day, gray clouds growing grayer by the hour. The various bushes of the gardens that have survived through the winter have a layer of frost on each leaf, coated with a kind of precision. There has still been no new snowfall, so the ground is a bleak grey-brown with worn tracks of various footfalls.

On the board, they both have each other in check. One move of her bishop and he would be defeated. One move of his queen and she would be taken down. Arravir doesn’t have to look at Cullen to know that he also sees this, that he likely saw it coming five moves before she did. 

Cullen moves his last remaining pawn one space forward in the nearly empty plane of the board. There is a pause before she pushes forward her rook, and it is in the same row as his pawn. In fact, she could take it out with the swipe to the side that the piece allows. But she doesn’t; it comes to a rest two spaces away from the tiny piece. 

He pushes the pawn forward again like clockwork, the pieces falling into their designated places, but something is broken. They cannot keep this up until their pieces have all walked off the edge of the board. 

“Arravir…” Cullen begins, the light golden brown of his eyes guarded, but with some big unsaid thing lingering in the way the corners of his mouth tug downwards. He leans forward. “We should talk about this.”

Arravir quickly stares down at the board again. She slowly pushes her rook forward once more, hand trembling over the delicately carved wooden nose of the creature. “I’m not ready to.” Pausing as if evaluating their pointless game still, she finally adds, weakly, “Please.”

He sighs. “Alright.”

“Thank you.” That, at least, she is grateful for.

He pushes his pawn forward. They continue playing. Neither of them move their kings out of check, but she can’t say why. 

Her hand has returned, as it so often does, to the coin around her neck. She can feel Cullen watching her apprehensively. But he says little, leaned back as far as possible in his chair, as if there is some thick barrier pressing them further and further apart.

“I know you think I’m angry,” Arravir says quietly, though she is not sure what she is aiming to articulate until the words start spilling out. In her peripheral vision she sees his head dart up to look at her. “It’s more than that. It’s… When I was...eleven, maybe twelve. I don’t know. I don’t know because I was so alone I did not know the year. After I was chased out of Denerim by the templars and before Clan Lavellan found me, I…”

She looks out across the gardens, at the statues of her gods mixed in with the statues of Andraste, all of them unblinking amidst the snow. There is so little other noise here, and she wonders if her story might break the serenity. And if so, maybe it deserves to be broken.

“I hid most often on small farms, as I’ve told you. I kept warm in the barns and I...stole food. One night in autumn I was digging through these crates that held the week’s harvest. It was right next to the farm house, and I could hear yelling from inside, but when you are that hungry, you don’t care about the danger.”

Arravir swallows hard, jaw clenching painfully. “But then the door opened, or maybe he was already outside or -- _I don’t know_ ,” she hisses between clenched teeth. “The human man -- the farmer -- was suddenly there and he _smelled_ of stale ale, screaming about something getting into his wares. And he -- “

“You don’t have to tell me if you aren’t comfortable,” Cullen says softly.

“Yes I do,” she retorts. “He said something, something like ‘I heard something digging through my goods. I thought it was a rabbit, and it turns out I was right.’”

She is crying again, and she hates that she is, hates that everything rubs so raw nearly twenty years later. Her hands clench into fists and she stares at the board with its sparse pieces remaining. 

“And he --- and he -- He grabbed me before I could get away and then I saw that he still had this bottle of drink in his hand and he…” Arravir takes a deep breath, bringing her fist to her mouth and muffling her sobs. “That shemlen son of bitch smashed the bottle against my face.”

The admission lands with some almighty thud between them, like one of the mountains has just split in half and shook like thunder. The gentle breeze blows from her hair to his. Cullen is looking at her with unrestrained horror, eyes wider than she has ever seen them except when he was in the thralls of lyrium-induced hallucinations.

Pressing her lips together to trap the desperate sound of her cries in, she unfurls her fist and silently points to the jagged scar that cuts down her cheek.

“That _monster,_ ” Cullen says furiously, and she realizes that at some point during the story he has moved his chair closer to hers.

Arravir nods, noticing his hand laying across the table now, not insisting she take it, but open as an invitation. She glances away. “I burned down his barn.”

“A small punishment,” he whispers.

Nodding again, more stiffly this time, Arravir finally meets his eyes. “So I am not angry. Or, I am. But it’s more than that.” She clears her throat, wiping at her face. “I am _scared_. I am so, so scared of humans, and of when I am just going to be another elf, another _problem_ to you.”

“Arravir, that’s not --”

He is cut off by a scraping against the stone beneath them as she pushes herself away and rises from her chair. “I...need some time. And…” Looking at the board again, at the perpetual draw between their kings, she gives a half-hearted shrug.

“Neither of us are going to win,” she says with a finality, turning swiftly away and out of the wintery gardens.

* * *

She winds up at the stables, running off the boiling emptiness of grief for her younger self. Passing by Blackwall -- no, Thom Rainier -- hard at work sanding something down, but with an extra set of hands, she realizes, casting a quick glance behind her. That Chance woman is sitting on the table, steadying what looks like a chair and talking animatedly. Suddenly, she seems to be everywhere.

But Arravir doesn’t have time to care. She is throwing Da’ghilana’s saddle on, tugging roughly at the straps to make sure everything is secure before tossing herself onto his back. The angry hart huffs out a breath that she somehow understands is actually excitement and he pushes his way out of the gates.

They ride hard, the wind whipping her uncomfortably as she digs her feet harder and harder into Da’ghilana’s sides, urging him forth. Miraculously, he complies without any annoyed tossing of his head, and they race through the snow-covered landscapes beyond Skyhold.

They charge up narrow mountainous paths bordered by pine trees that, like the bushes in Skyhold' gardens, seem to have had each individual needle loving painted white. They maneuver around fallen boulders and the remainders of rock slides. They pant together in the thin air. 

Finally, she pulls tight on the reins and Da’ghilana neighs loudly as he slams to a stop. They are in some nondescript meadow between thick trees. There are no tracks across the smooth blanket of snow except the needle-thin tracks of various birds. 

Arravir slips from the saddle, dragging a hand along Da’ghilana’s neck fondly before lightly stepping into the undisturbed land, feet crunching oddly on the old snow. She walks into the middle of the clearing and turns in a full circle.

Reaching a hand into the crisp air, she snaps, and a fiery spark of color pops into life around her. Breathing out a long, steady breath, a trail of fire flows from her fingers like the eager, chipper rivers of snowmelt in spring. She continues turning, letting the fire wrap in a wide circle around her.

And then she remembers the thunder of her own spoken declaration to Cullen, and the feeling of the sharp cut of the glass. 

And she screams.

It is a white hot fury, not beautiful, not kind, not vindictive, just _burning_. It is the clap of midsummer thunderstorms, and the flames grow higher. She runs through the clearing, and the fire eats up the packed old snow, boiling it with a high-pitched keen like a kettle that has run too long. 

After a few minutes of tearing up the winter’s own wrath with her own, she turns slowly, the fire having burned itself away in the winds. She breaths in shallow gasps, chest heaving, hair falling in her face, and it feels like two lifetimes worth of building her -- building Arravir, this name she has chosen for herself -- has collapsed into a pile of ash and bone.

Slowly, ashamedly, she marches towards Da’ghilana, who, still saddled, has laid down propped against a tree, watching her dispassionately. He snorts as she walks up to him, covered in soot, and falls into a crumped heap beside him.

Curling up into his side and all of his sweaty fur, she begins quietly rubbing at his neck, his shoulders. He brays his approval.

“There is this story the hahren -- Clan Lavellan’s hahren --” she begins, correcting herself, because she has been guided by two in her life. “This story that he used to tell. It was one of my favorites. Elgar’nan was furious with the world, and he banished the sun from the sky and threw it into the dirt, dimming and dirtying everything.”

Her voice is rough, somewhat uneven. She holds up her left hand and lets the Anchor shine its sickly green against the darkening sky. She remembers the horror of the Rift staring at them every day in Haven.

“But then...Mythal made him put it back, made him cease his destruction. And...more than that. She knelt in the wounded soil and she scooped it up, just like she was moulding clay or crafting with the finest Ironbark...And she made the moon. Right out of that bleeding, burning earth. She hung it in the sky to give us light even when the sun faded away at the end of the day.”

Lowering her glowing, marked hand and pressing it to her chest, she leaned back again, feeling Da’ghilana’s steady breaths rising and falling with his massive ribcage. “It is foolish, Ghi, but… If Mythal had not been murdered...What would she have made out of...this wounded earth?”

There is a lengthy moment of silence where she starts to feel silly asking it of her hart, before she feels a rough knock on her shoulder. Da’ghilana insistently nudges her side with his head, nearly raking her with his antlers. 

Arravir looks at him, bewildered, before a gentle, absurd thought occurs to her. “Me?” She asks, rubbing his head. “That would be something, wouldn’t it?” She laughs weakly. “These shemlen have staked their lives for so long on the hope that their Andraste sent me...but, if _Mythal_ had...Me, a little girl from an alienage too stuborn to die when the world tried…” She shakes her head, but a small smile twitches at her mouth. “It’s a nice thought.”

The energy drains from her, and she leans back against the hart, pulling her feet to her chest, and closes her eyes, drifting off beneath that tree in a field of ash, and dreams of a world where Ghi is right and the voices from the Well we're as clear as her own name.

* * *

It is deep into the night when she rides back through the gates of Skyhold. There are some stars peeking through the clouds now, just barely shining. Arravir looks to where the moon pierces through its trappings, and wonders if the Creators are able to do the same.

She quickly makes her way back to her quarters, pausing at the top of the stairs to observe the dark room. Her caution is an old habit that sits behind her in the dark. Looking around the room, she lights one of the braziers on the wall, letting the orange glow fill the corner nearest her.

Something feels off, but she can’t quite name it until she steps further into the chamber.

There is something on her bed. Walking quicker, she sees it is a small, simple wooden box. It is short but wide, rectangular in shape and sturdy. There is no letter or note on it, no engravings into its surface to suggest the opalescence of the Orlesians.

Arravir looks around the room again. The balcony doors are shut, nothing is lit except the single torch she has struck into light at the entrance. Nothing is out of place, just this small box.

So she reaches for it, curiosity brimming.

And when she slowly lifts the cover, revealing its contents...she crumples to the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Christine (FidgetyWriter) for helping me many months ago to come up with the idea of Arravir and Cullen dancing completely barefoot at the Winter Palace.
> 
> And thank you to my friend Sierra (who doesn't have an Ao3) who helped me figure out the spring festival in the Denerim alienage as well as some other dialogue in this chapter!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! [Brad Pitt voice] What's in the booox???


	8. The Opening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the incredible words on the last chapter. I am trying to pull together all the threads of this story now, and I realize how much bigger this has become since I first envisioned this story over a year ago.
> 
> This was originally the first half of what I currently plan to be the final chapter, though, as I kept writing, as if often the case, my outline proved to be a liar. This became much longer than I thought, and it seems best for the sake of pacing to split this chapter in half. 
> 
> I hope that I was right. :)
> 
> And now -- let's open the box.

The lid of the box is laying haphazardly across its base and onto the extravagant comforter of her too-large bed.

The violet fabric flows from it and dips over the edge into the tight embrace of Arravir, who is slumped against the sheets. There are flowers embroidered intricately across the skirts, so lush and colorful it seems astorybook meadow has flourished across the bed sheets. She feels like a small child with her legs pressed tight against her, clutching onto something adored like it will be taken from her.

She is trembling, eyes shut tight to the world.

Finally, she unravels herself and holds it in front of her. The light by the stairwell is weakly dancing, stretching closer and closer to her. Still, she can make out the designs in the dress, the labor and love and memory worked into it.

The dress is consistent in hue unlike the one she had worn as a child, with its skirts swooping and rounded before climbing back up to the waistline, and, she realizes, after a few moments of spaced-out blinking, that it is shaped like flower petals. The neckline, waist, and hem of the skirts are all woven with teal thread, dappling the material like its field of flowers is reflecting back the sky. 

_“...they wrapped a bow around my waist. It was...teal, I think?”_ She had said to Cullen on that balcony all those months ago. She had described that dress while pressed against his side, thinking the feeling of the story was the only thing that would stay afloat in memory, but...

Creators, what had he said? _"I would have liked to see that.”_

Still sitting, she pulls desperately for the box and it falls unceremoniously on top of her, sliding down how legs. Running her hands over every inch of the inside, as if she has missed something, as if she is questioning the wood itself to give its story, she finally concedes that there was no letter accompanying it at all.

But there is no question who sent it. She had never told anyone else that story, not in Clan Lavellan where she had been more focused on creating Arravir than on remembering Lyra, and not anyone else in the Inquisition, where she was more focused on being strong than being beautiful. 

Cullen has given this to her, had remembered every detail of what she had told him, and decided to have someone make this. When? And why? Her head practically throbs with the weight of its questions.

Slowly, she sets the lid of the box aside, letting the small clack of it hitting the floor snap open the silence. She delicately pulls the dress so the neckline rests just as the top of her knees and the skirts pool on her lap. Arravir sniffles, running her fingers over the dozens of embroidered flowers -- roses and poppies and tulips -- over and over again in the dark, hushing the buzzing questions to find the simple answers of unforgettable, sugary-sweet joys bonded to every last thread.

* * *

  
  


**TWENTY YEARS EARLIER**

“Come on, come on, come on, come on!” Reegan Tabris pleaded impatiently, grabbing her hand and dragging her past the vhenadahl and towards the raised stage that was a centerpiece of the alienage -- where the hahren spoke and where awkward young couples were married. She had never witnessed one of those weddings, of course. The magic might flare up, her father had reminded her. And she hadn’t needed to be told more than once. 

But today was different. Everyone she knew and still more -- it was amazing how many souls were crammed between the bars at the entrance to the alienage, the wrought iron that defined their world -- were all crowded around, laughing and talking and shouting uproariously. Reegan slipped away for a moment, sunlight leaping off her ginger hair as a group of older kids cut through, dancing erratically, jeering as they slid around and passed a bottle between them. 

She looked around wildly, breath coming hard amidst a chorus of clapping hands and an accelerating drum beat. Her hands clutched at the sides of her dress nervously. Then, a hand yanked her from the side and she was crashing into something -- _someone._

“Gotcha!” Reegan laughed in that boisterous way she did, as if the sound was too big for her body.

She looked up at her friend, a few inches taller than her, and saw Shianni and Sorel -- Tabris’ cousins -- were flanking her. Sorel had just recently hit a growth spirt and he was all gawky limbs hanging from his slightly slumped form, while Shianni seemed to glow as the sunlight hit her, her hair uncharacteristically pulled down to grace her shoulders. They were, all three of them, dressed in the finest clothes they owned, Shianni and Reegan matching in bright pink dresses that ended just above their knees. They were adorned with flowers in every place they seemed to be able to fit them -- in their hair, around the necks, their wrists -- even tucked into a pocket on the front of Sorel’s shirt. Everything seemed brighter today, like the hahren had pulled the sun closer to them with just his bold but steady voice and all his calm kind of urgency. 

“Oh, hey Lyra!” Sorel said in greeting, mouth quirking up. “Your dad decide to let you outside today? Well, we can show you around, don’t worry. That bright thing above us is called the _sun_ , and that gnarly big thing right there is a _tree, and_ \--”

“Sorel!” Shianni and Reegan yelled in unison, Reegan elbowing him hard in the ribs, making him clutch his side as his face contorted with shock. Lyra felt like she was retreating inside of herself and closing some door, wondering if maybe she should have just stayed in. The drums beat persistently onwards.

“What my cousin means to say is that you look great, Lyra! We’re really glad you’re here,” Shianni said gently, in a way that made her believe it. That they really were happy to have her. She smiled shyly.

“Yeah, and look at _this!”_ Reegan said with a flourish, pulling -- as if from thin air -- two small circles of pure white flowers threaded together. “C’mere!” 

She obeyed, stepping forward awkwardly, still feeling so out of place, so much like every eye was on her. But Reegan just plopped the ring of flowers on top of her head, like the crowns that princesses wore in the adventurous stories with heroes and legendary swords and powerful dragons. The heroes in those all had rounded ears and words like _bann_ and _arl_ . They would trip over words like _hahren_ and _vhenadahl._

The flowers slipped lopsidedly in front of her right eye and she giggled as Reegan and Shianni righted it, making sure her hair didn’t get tangled with the twisting stems.

Daintily, Reegan placed the matching one on top of her head, like she had practiced it before coming outside, and winked conspiratorially at Lyra, who didn’t know what exactly was the secret they were sharing.

“Been running errands for Alarith for a few weeks and bam! I saved up enough to buy us the best of the best from the old ladies who sell the flower...hats,” she finished lamely.

“I don’t think they’re called that,” Lyra said skeptically.

“Yeah, well…” Reegan shrugged. “Still got ‘em, anyway. But come on you three, what are we standing around for?” Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed Lyra’s arm again and pulled her into a wider space between dancing groups of people.

As if all the alienage had been waiting for the four of them to arrive, people suddenly started coupling off, facing a partner and, with a gesture from the hahren on the stage, leapt into a dance. Shianni and Sorel beside her started into a series of interconnected, swinging steps, trading places repeatedly in the space of one refrain. Lyra glanced nervously from them to Reegan and back to the stage where the hahren was now laughing jovially as one couple fell over themselves and into the dirt.

“D’you know the steps?” Reegan asked, pulling her focus to the beaming face of her friend.

Lyra nodded slowly. “But I’ve never...Well, I’ve only danced with papa, and never actually to music…”

“The music makes it easier!” Reegan insisted. “Come on! You gotta show off that new dress of yours _somehow_.”

She looked down at her skinny legs and swayed back and forth, watching the purple of her dress swish around her like the flags of armies from those fabled human stories flying in the winds of their hard-won but secure victory. Or maybe like the dresses princesses wore that dragged on the tile behind them and all the way down the hall. Lyra had never understood why someone would wear an outfit like that, but there was something untouchable about it all, so she assumed it was something worth desiring.

And so was _her_ dress. Bouncing on her feet once, she threw out her arms to Reegan with an elated laugh and the two of them began stomping together with the quick tempo of all the elves in all the alienage who had to ability to dance. Their hands slid down each other’s arms as they twisted around each other, and Lyra bristled slightly at the touch, but kept her dance up all the same.

It was like all the nights she had spent twirling without direction around the creaking floors of their small apartment. It was like the small hum at the back of her father’s throat when he led her through the steps, telling her of how he had learned it as a boy himself and how any child in any alienage would be lucky to have a partner like her. 

Reegan suddenly gave her a push to the side and she stumbled into Shianni’s arms. With her world still spinning, she slowly punched into the sharp steps with her new partner, swinging around and around before ending up then with Sorel and eventually back to Reegan.

Mid-spin she caught the hahren’s eyes and he smiled with a pride resembling that which perched so often on her father’s features. She faltered in her movements, but he did not falter in his smile. The hard lines of his face echoed a wisdom that Lyra wanted to understand, but it all slipped from her like this perfect day would, too. She was so young but brimming with curiosity and then suffocated by the eternal sunsets that seemed to hang over her world.

The flowers sunk into her eyes like spring was now part of her. She was panting from exhaustion but nothing could stop her from dancing on and on, giggling like she had just discovered what laughter was. All the elves with their rare brightly colored clothing reserved just for this day shimmered in that impossibly bright sunlight that made her world drip with honey. 

And then, at some point, she spun into the open arms of her father, whose grin made him look younger -- or maybe that was his true age, and every other day he wore the face of someone decades older than him. She almost didn’t recognize him, until she then shrieked his name. He spun her again and again and again until everything swam from her dizziness and they drank fruity drinks from bowls passed around and everyone grew pleasantly full with the taste of citrus as the sun sank below the high, mismatched buildings of the alienage. 

The ground was littered with petals and Lyra thought she could break loose on the winds, dissolving into flowers, too. She imagined the fiery lights she made with her magic floating and peeling away as gently, and she never had to hide anything again because the whole world fell in love with the beauty of her gossamer glowing flames that she plucked tenderly from the air. The templars would all drop their swords and dissolve into the earth, she thought, the monsters disappearing inside their armor that clanked on the ground, never to be heard from again. The humans would keep the gates open all the time, and she and Reegan and all their families would see what lay beyond Denerim -- beyond even Ferelden.

* * *

  
  
  


**PRESENT DAY**

It was a silly fantasy, Arravir thinks, though she keeps tracing the flowers, mind half drifted towards the shores of that now-inconceivable world. Every part of that dream had torn itself apart, even the idea of her magic always being gentle. The world had devoured itself, and the templars had grown into hulking behemoths rather than turn to dust. The only truth was that she and Reegan had both seen so much beyond Denerim now, for better and for worse.

It was silly and it was a naive illusion to have had, absolutely, but that had been the beauty of it, hadn’t it? That her father and her friends had protected her enough from the horrors of her world that she could dream of such impossibilities. Arravir had never thought of it that way. She had never let herself linger too much on any of her childhood, though the footprints sunk as deep into her mind as if she had just trod those paths. 

It hurt to remember, but in a way it had hurt more to pretend it had not happened. She had not even remembered her dream of the world or the taste of the drinks until this dress was splayed across her lap.

It is not a recreation of the dress she had worn that hard-won day of peace in the alienage over two decades ago. It is the dress she had imagined, _dreamed_ of wearing then, the one she had thought she had had on, the one the world of her childish fantasy would blush and applaud to. It captures the feeling of floating on spry feet beneath the thick gnarled limbs of the vhenadahl. This dress blooms with a spring of its own.

And it always _will_ bloom, she realizes with a half-choked sob. Even through these stale winters, even through everything that had clipped and strangled out the blossoms of innocence from her lonely childhood. She buries her face in the fabric, breathing it in as though it has some sweet pollen. This is hers. 

After a few more minutes of silent reverie, she rises and walks to her dresser, intent on seeing how it fits.

* * *

  
  


Arravir is pulling a cloak tighter around her chest, shivering slightly in the night winds, when she raises a tentative fist and knocks on the heavy door. An orangish glow is visible through the windows, and even if she had not been able to spot that, she knows that he would be awake anyway.

His voice is rough when he responds, heavy with grogginess like when he has just woken from sleep. There is a scraping sound, like he is quickly standing. “Yes, what is it? Come in.”

So she pushes her weight against it, cringing as the hinges squeak, and steps carefully just inside the doorway. She clasps the cloak tighter around her chest with both hands and feels her posture straighten. 

Cullen is still in his full armor though it is closer to dawn than to dusk, standing behind his desk with one hand still braced to it. He freezes when she comes into view. “Ar-- Inquisitor,” he says quickly, switching into his carefully measured Commander’s voice. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Arravir breathes. “The...opposite, actually.” 

He hesitates, clearly unsure of what to say. There are long shadows cast across his face, emphasizing the bags beneath his eyes. Then, understanding strikes his features as his mouth drops open. "I take it you... received my gift, then?"

By way of answering, she unfastens the cloak and let's it flutter to the floor. 

The dress fits her perfectly, every inch of it,l it has been taken from a mold of her, like the tailor had had every mannequin in their workshop bearing her likeness. As if she was the standard and not an outlier. The glow of the torchlight dances across the violet fabric, so similar and yet so different a look from her dancing in the strong afternoon light all those years ago. It is a rare streak of color in the middle of this grey winter.

Cullen is staring at her, and the moment hangs around them like that brief glimpse of freefall after a leap; they are floating with the knowledge of the inevitable crash. And still, the echo of a smile crosses his face. Arravir feels herself repeating the action as she studies him, still wrapped in her own confusion and every overwhelming emotion that had pulled her to the floor when she opened the box some time ago now.

“You look…” Cullen begins, but Arravir cuts him short, raising a hand, not sure she’s ready to hear it. She steps closer to him. 

“You remembered?” It is the heart of all of her questions, and the first one that needs to be asked. But she did not expect her voice to crack the way it does when she speaks it.

“Of course,” he says quietly, but steadily, as if it’s the easiest thing he’s ever done. He slips out from behind his desk, positioning himself cautiously closer to her. “It was important to you.”

They hold each other’s gazes for a poignant pause, the air between them feeling like simmering embers. For a brief, wild moment, her mind whips back to the last time they had stood in his office together, the night before leaving for the Arbor Wilds. He had pinned her against one of the doors, mouth discovering the exact shape that her neck curved when she threw her head back with a pleased gasp.

Almost embarrassed, she pulls herself out of that memory with a deep intake of breath, feeling her eyes stinging with tears again as her next question presents itself. “ _When_ did you…?”

Cullen’s eyes are shining too, and he glances away nervously before tilting his head slightly and meeting her gaze again. “I had assistance from Josephine, of course. She has records of the elven tailors approved by you, as well as your measurements and all these things I couldn’t begin to have the knowledge of nor patience for. But...I first approached her with the idea the day after we returned from the Winter Palace.” 

“Cullen…” She whispers.

“I’m afraid it only took this long because I was rather selective and rejected the first batch of designs. But looking at it now, there’s no questioning their skill, only my judgment of it.” There is something sad lurking beneath the words that quiets the words in her own throat. Arravir simply shakes her head with a kind of urgency, stepping towards him again so there is little more than a foot between them.

“Thank you,” she says then, trying to paint the words with the colors of everything she is feeling right now. She wants to give him the feeling of elation that the dress has reminded her of, but there is still something tense and ready to snap between them. She does not close the distance, but instead slowly reaches out one of her hands and takes his own gloved one in a light and tentative touch of fingers. They do not hold tight, but his thumb runs along her index finger lightly with a kind of aching restraint.

He clears his throat and nods at her. “It was actually ready just before our campaign in the Wilds began, but…” Cullen reaches back with his free hand and rubs the back of his neck. She thinks she is imagining the blush that blooms up his neck and ears. “We were otherwise... _occupied_ that last night.”

The comment catches her so off-guard that she almost laughs, but she is afraid that this tension may sour even their laughter. It is still endearing that even in private he gets so flustered, especially when in truth that night had not been overly _indecent_ , as he almost seemed ready to say; there had not even been any removals of clothing. In fact, they never have made love -- every part of this relationship has been moved forward with a hushed and cautious respect, even reverence. And there have been days where both of them have pulled away from touch, their own minds screaming with the memories of past hurt.

Arravir squeezes his fingers still tenderly toying with her own and pulls it away to clutch at the dress again, staring down at it. “Thank you,” she repeats, because nothing else she could say seems to make itself known, and it if did, it would hardly pale in comparison anyway. “I...thank you. You have given me a lot to think about.”

He fidgets in her peripheral vision. “We have a lot to _talk_ about, too, if you are ready to.”

“I’m...not,” She says slowly, fatigue and the day’s windstorm of emotion weighing heavy on her already burdened shoulders. “But...soon?”

When she looks up again, he has closed his eyes, expression briefly unreadable. Then, he nods. “I will be here.”

“Thank you,” she replies, hoping the word has not been worn down from overuse. To her, it has meant something different every time she has said it. “Thank you. I should go now, the dawn is so close.” Stooping to grab the cloak from the floor, she pauses before pulling it over the dress again. “But...goodnight, Cullen.”

“Goodnight, Arravir.”

He does not seem to move at all as he watches her go, but when she pulls open the door she had entered from, he calls out to her. She pauses, half in the light and half in the windswept night.

“Yes?”

“Do you?” He asks, and she turns around to look at him. Seeming to realize he needs to say more he adds, “I mean to say -- Do you feel beautiful again?”

The smile that rises on her face is slow in its growth, spreading across her face as if torn with disbelief of its own existence. But it becomes a grin, all the same.

“More than I ever have before, vhenan.”

And she lets the door click gently into place, knowing he still does not know the meaning of the word, but beginning to feel sure again that she means it.

* * *

  
  


It is two days later and she is in the library with Dorian again, as she nearly always finds herself. The weather is marginally warmer, though the narrow latticed windows in the tower are still coated with a layer of frost. When she absentmindedly contemplates some detail of the vir abelasan’s whispers or of the books she has been reading, she draws designs in the condensation with an outstretched hand.

“You’ll figure this whole Well business out,” Dorian says at one such instance, interrupting her thoughts. He speaks casually, not looking up from the book in his hand. He is staring at it with a frown, another volume tossed unceremoniously at his feet a few minutes before. “Don’t prove that Royal Jester of the Arcane Arts right.”

“Morrigan will never be right, Dorian,” Arravir says seriously. “I don’t doubt her competence with magic _meant_ for her kind. But she will never be elvhen, no matter what kinds of stories of she thinks she has that I do not.”

Dorian does glance up at that, a small smirk on his mouth. “Good. I’m delighted to hear it! And that you’re still so rightfully _you.”_

“I feel..” She begins, still staring out the window, frustrated. “I feel like the answers are _right here_ , but like something is holding me back, and...maybe it is myself. “ She feels vulnerable, exposed, for admitting that thought which has plagued her for days now. “That makes me furious. I can’t understand why…” Trailing off, she stares at the ceiling in frustration.

“Well, it’s not unprecedented for deep magic to be connected to our own perception, though to what extent with something like the compiled knowledge of a _dizzying_ number of years and lives? I can’t say I have the beginning of an idea.”

“Me neither,” Arravir sighs. “There’s this vague idea of...a forest and a woman and...a weapon of some kind. I’m not even sure what _more_ I could do to devote myself to Mythal.”

There is a thoughtful pause before there is the soft clap of a book closing and Dorian speaks again. “Have you considered the idea that this isn’t about some sort of understanding of Mythal, but of _yourself?_ ”

“Why --” She begins, surprised, and then turns her tone into a teasing one. “You sound like Cole.”

At that, Dorian laughs, leaning against the armrest of the chair he is in. “He’s not all bad. And he has started to learn something of personal space, so I have chosen not to be insulted by the comparison.”

Before Arravir can reply, another figure pops out from behind the bookshelf across from her. The wiry, sun-touched hair of Chance falls into her face. “ _Je peux vous déranger_?” She says with a wink, throwing a glance at Dorian. “Sorry, Inquisitor, but I thought you might want to know -- there’s a letter for you that’s just arrived in the rookery. Spymaster almost cut my hand off for reaching for it to bring it to you myself, though, so you’ll have to get it!”

“Thank you, Chance,” Arravir says, voice slipping easily into her professional tone. “Do you know who it was from?”

Chance throws up both of her unharmed hands with a smirk. “Obviously not.”

Dorian snorts amusedly as Arravir restrains herself from rolling her eyes. “Alright. I’ll go right now,” she says, standing. “But, Chance, I did want to ask you something.”

The shorter woman perks up, eyes wide. “Mmhmm?”

“I saw you by the stables with Thom Rainier the other day. You two seem to be friendly, and...many have not been to him after the reveal of his true identity. I myself am still trying to make my peace with it, and I wanted to ask what your opinion of the man is.”

“Thom?” Chance says with a surprised smile. “I like him! I mean, I know what he did, but...I’m not sure that was the same person who pledged himself to this Inquisition, you know? And he’s so funny.” She pauses thoughtfully. “He reminds me of my dad.”

Arravir takes the words with care, not entirely sure why she respects the opinion of a woman she hardly knows so much. But her honesty and easy humor is refreshing, even endearing. The comparison to her family is so easily remarked upon, and she thinks again of the Chance’s apparent half-Orlesian and half-Fereldan heritage. “I still forget the fact that Thom is actually Orlesian, he has hidden it well.”

Chance’s mouth scrunches together in confusion before some realization seems to jolt through her whole body. “Oh! No! My mom’s the Orlesian one. My dad’s a dwarf.” 

"Oh," Arravir says, trying to bury the surprise and take it in stride instead. She remembers the way Chance had dodged the question of whether or not she was Fereldan the last time they had spoken. But now, she says it matter-of-factly, like it’s obvious and normal. Arravir thinks there is something admirable in that. "I admit I’ve never met someone who is half dwarven before. Your parents must love each other very much.”

At that, Chance’s face lights up again with a broad smile. “You have no idea,” she says dreamily. “And hey, I haven’t met a half dwarven person, either! Or, well, another one.” Pausing indecisively, fidgeting with the overlarge coat she is wearing, she adds, “Thanks, Inquisitor,” and dashes away.

“Just when I think Thedas can’t have too many more surprises for me than the last three years have given, well, there we are,” Dorian says sagely, and Arravir turns quickly back to him, nearly having forgotten he was there. “Now, are you going to get that letter before Leliana has to threaten more dismemberments? Or shall I post a warning to everyone going up that staircase?”

Shaking her head, Arravir slips quietly away and up to the top floor where the troubled cawing of all the Spymaster’s birds grows to a fever pitch.

“Ah, Inquisitor,” Leliana says the moment Arravir appears at the back of the stairs, though she is facing her private altar, seeming to be in deep contemplation. Gesturing towards a nearby table, she adds, “I thought you would not like to see that fall into any hands except your own. The handwriting on the outside matches that of your Keeper.”

Looking at her skeptically, shocked that Leliana recognizes Deshanna’s handwriting, Arravir approaches the table, and sure enough, the blank exterior of the parchment reads _Arravir_ in her mentor’s precise, sharp script.

Scrambling for it like a woman dying of hunger, she practically tears the seal off in her desperation for some form of the voice she has admired so deeply for seventeen years.

> _Da’len,_
> 
> _When you were younger, like a plant uprooted that refused to wilt, I wondered of your future. You were older than the little ones that waited for the stories of the hahren, yet sat wide eyed through every tale he could tell. You asked questions, many none of us had answers to. The hahren said to me once that you would undoubtedly pledge yourself to Andruil when you came of age. He said your hunt was life itself._
> 
> _I was amazed. Banal nadas, I told him. She is surprising._
> 
> _I do not believe I knew the truth of my own words. The Herald of Andraste, The Inquisitor. So many names you take, da’len. Never forget the one you chose. Just as you chose Mythal. You are the protector, perhaps of more than our clan, but our world._
> 
> _I cannot pretend to speak directly for the Creators, not when they have been so forcibly ripped from us, but it appears that Mythal chose_ you _, too. How precious a thing you have witnessed and how precious the knowledge you have consumed. To imagine walking those halls is nearly overwhelming. I have shared your story with the Clan, and the wonder has rippled out among us. We have begun looking through our stories to try to understand if Mythal’s murder, as you say, was buried somewhere among this._
> 
> _Mala suledin nadas. This will not be easy. If I spoke for only myself, I would cross the sea to be at your side. You do not need my help, but I would give it freely. Now, you have my words and my prayers. May they be enough._
> 
> _When things are more stable, several of our members wish to explore these ruins. Will your Inquisition make way for us there?_
> 
> _In the meantime, do not worry for us here. We will carry on. I dare say the Free Marches are tame compared to your Ferelden. Now that all the trouble in Wycome has settled down, we are beginning to dream again. The elves from the city are adjusting well, and more yet may join us. We have spent much time in that alienage, and I believe that those who doubted you once because you were one of them have no thoughts to question your journey again._
> 
> _As for your wish for guidance, I can only say that this is a path you have and will continue to take yourself. There is no other of the elvhen both of the city and of the dalish, both worshipped and insulted by the shemlen. It is -- as you declared when you told us the name you chose for yourself -- your path._
> 
> _Remember your fire, da’len. Use it as a light._
> 
> _And remember that though this path is yours to take, you are not alone._
> 
> _Ara ma’athlan vhenas._
> 
> _\- Deshanna_

Arravir reads the letter over multiple times, feeling both the strength of Deshanna’s arms around her, and the keen pang somewhere in her middle that reminds her of the distance and years between them now. 

She closes her eyes to try to remember the exact timbre of the Keeper’s voice, the sturdiness of her phrasing and the raising of her pitch when lightly teasing Arravir, who had always been too serious, too unyielding, in those years. It is almost enough to hear her through the heavily curtained veil of memory. But she is sure she is missing something. 

She misses the Clan as she has only recently been able to admit to herself that she misses the alienage. She misses all of these fractured parts of her. She does not know if they make a whole.

Deshanna seems to believe that they do, but there is no template for her existence. Her neck aches like they have placed a crown on lead on her, declaring her something unknown, and yet holy. And yet cursed.

She skims back through the letter, searching for the line that reaches straight into her chest. _Remember the name you chose yourself._

Arravir. It _was_ something she had chosen, once she had some fumbling grasp of the elvhen language. She could not go on as Lyra -- it was too lyrical, too much the name of a girl who felt half-dead inside of her.

The world had tried to determine her path, so she had forged her own identity into a statement that her path was hers to choose. It was loose binding of the words, but more importantly it was true, and the title had granted her many curious looks from Solas and Morrigan over the years. _Arravir: my path, my way._

And now, in the midst of her breaking down, it feels an awful thing to have forgotten. She kept urging to everyone around her that she was Mythal’s, that she had made a pledge to that silent goddess -- but she had also made a pledge to herself. 

For some reason, that thought creates in her mind a kind of hum, a kind of singing, growing in its boldness. The vir’abelasan is responding to her.

She takes a deep breath and looks around the room, not bothered by the cacophony of birds but entranced only by the way the weak light filtering in shines against their black wings. There are so many choices yet to make on this path of hers, she thinks. 

And then, a voice that normally pointed like a dagger pushes its way through to her. It is softer now, more inquisitive than interrogative. “Inquisitor, I have been hoping to speak with you.” Leliana is turned away from her shrine now, instead haloed by its candlelight. 

Arravir nods for her to continue, and she does. “The Hero of Ferelden -- Reegan,” Leliana corrects herself, voice uncharacteristically warm. The Spymaster is one of the few people who knows of the shared history of the Warden-Commander and the Inquisitor. “When I travelled with her to Haven all those years ago, I remember the moment of standing before the ashes of Andraste. I thought of her betrayal, of her murder and the sword plunged straight through her heart -- And yet, I was also invigorated, more than I have ever been again.”

She takes a moment to restrain her face then, to try to feign a casualness that both of them know is a fraud. “I have told you that I once believed that I was chosen by the Maker. It was a foolish wish made by a foolish girl. In that moment though, nothing could have convinced me otherwise.” 

“Are you trying to tell me that my choice at the vir’abelasan was also just some misguided decision built off a fantasy?” Arravir cuts in defensively.

“No!” Leliana says, taking a step towards her, bright blue eyes suddenly wide. She looks younger all in the way she seeks to correct herself. “Quite the opposite, in fact. What I am meaning to tell you is that no matter how wrong I was, no matter how much I should not and never will again wait for the Maker to make the world right...Arravir, had I been in that temple with you, I want you to know that I would have stopped anyone who tried to tell you that you did not have a right to that feeling. To being part of something sacred.” 

“I…” Arravir swallows. It is rare, after all of Cassandra’s condescension, to remember that a human so deeply involved in the Chantry can grant merit and value to her people’s beliefs. The Spymaster has always been aloof or cordial at best, and though Arravir respects her a great deal, she could not have imagined how deeply the feeling was returned. “Thank you, Leliana.” 

Leliana’s face looks less gaunt when she smiles, Arravir thinks.

“Reegan used to joke by the fireside about how as a child she wanted so badly to run away and join the dalish, but that she could never leave the alienage because she ‘liked the stench so much.’”

It is Arravir’s turn to smile. “You would not believe how often she used to try to convince me. I had no idea she still thought about it as she got older, after I…Well, after our friendship ended.” She trails off, and the smile melts down into a stiff expression approximating horror. 

“The friendship did not end. It endured,” Leliana says, and it is like both of them are suddenly breathless with the force of her statement. It is true; the hero of Ferelden had made an appearance at Skyhold a year and a half earlier, shortly after the battle at Adamant fortress. Reegan had come to personally see to the safety of fellow warden Alistair, and Arravir had practically hidden in corners to avoid the painful confrontation. But, miraculously, like the grace of every god in creation, Reegan had slowly, over the course of multiple days, recognized and embraced her.

It had been joyful, but subdued. There was a heaviness to both their eyes now; Arravir's dark brown and Reegan's blue each burned with untold griefs. They had both had to tear their way out of the bellies of great beasts. 

The pause has lasted too long for it to feel natural. The room feels quieter despite the chattering birds. darAnd omethingsk seems to pass over Leliana’s hooded features. It is as though, right in front of her, the other woman transforms from a dreaming bard to a shadow of the hardened killer from the avoided future Alexius had tried to bring. 

“So much of the harm done to both of you was at the hands of the Chantry.” Her mask seems to have slipped too much for her own liking, and the cunning, calculating tone is returning to her voice. “Whatever we become after all of this, I will do what it takes to make sure that we do not repeat those crimes, Inquisitor.”

Something slips into place in Arravir’s mind then, a decision solidifying. She feels that after all of this time something has shifted between the two of them. 

“I believe you, Spymaster,” she says with a proud nod, holding tight still to the letter full of other promises of strength. There is something of a smirk on her mouth as she remembers what purpose feels like. “And I look forward to it.”


	9. The Guide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays! Thank you to everyone who has made this journey with me and Arravir. 
> 
> Content warnings: discussions of death and some mild body image issues.

Arravir starts to feel a chill as she makes her way down the tower. Not the regular cold that sits inside of her through the winter months; it is one that makes her fingers shake as she presses her hand against the grey stone to stay upright as her world sways ever so slightly. The voices are so loud that it takes every shred of her willpower to keep walking, one step at a time, face carefully poised in neutrality. Her knees buckle but she stares ahead with practiced diligence once again. 

She slowly walks outside where the sky seems to be wrestling with itself today; half the world above is suppressed by those dark clouds that have fallen over them like an avalanche these past weeks, and the other half is a tentative blue. Arravir stands for a moment enraptured at the color again, at the neverending war of nature and of change.

Then, still dizzy, still feverish, she seems to glide across the hardened snow. She does not know where she is going, and she watches the people crossing the courtyards in their paths around and around her, interweaving their lives together. Some give her curious glances where she stands, others give quick bows, and others look over her from head to toe, a cruel calculation in their eyes. It is nothing she is not accustomed to -- existing on the edge of disdain in society has not made her invisible, it has made her seen, down to every twitch of her eyebrows. Her being is weighed for judgment on tipped scales that can never be made even. 

She exhales slowly, still feeling like her movements are coming from somewhere just outside of her. She is Arravir, she has promised to be Arravir, she knows this, but she does not know what to do next.

As she almost always does when in need of solitude, she finds herself walking to the stables. She pauses, catching her breath because she is suddenly winded. Standing by the barn, she turns to see Chance, once again perched on the workbench and chatting away with Thom Rainier. 

Arravir pushes her hair behind her ear and approaches them slowly. Chance sees her from the corner of her eye and then waves her over. Thom looks over his shoulder and then straightens from the chair he is still intently shaping. 

“Hello Thom,” Arravir says cautiously. “I hope you are well.” She is almost surprised with herself that she means it. 

“Inquisitor,” he says, wiping his hands with a dirty rag and giving her a polite nod. “I am...better than I deserve.”

“It’s not about what we deserve, is it?” Chance interrupts. “Or, maybe it is. But you’ve been given another Chance, Thom, so don’t you think you should be livin’ it instead of groveling in it?”

“I hate it when she talks sense,” Thom says with a sigh, pulling at his beard, but it is clear he is smiling.

Chance whispers something lightning fast in the throaty Orlesian tongue and then, to Arravir’s surprise, Thom replies in what seems to be a deadpan. It sends Chance into a burst of hysterics. Arravir has never heard Thom actually speak Orlesian before, and the quality of his voice changes. It is...higher, somehow, more clipped of its rugged edge.

Wiping at her eyes, rocking slightly, Chance sighs. “Sorry, Inquisitor, it’s that…Oh, nevermind. How are ya doing? Did you get your letter from the Spymaster?”

“Yes, I -- I did,” Arravir stutters. Her head is so cramped with every voice that she had forgotten she had just spoken with her. “Sorry I…” She puts out a hand and leans against the bench, feeling close to fainting.

Both Chance and Thom reach voice concern but she waves them off. “It’s…” One deep breath. Two. She repeats the motion, and the conversations come back to her. “Chance, can I ask you something?”

“‘Course!”

“You said before that you are the only half dwarven person you know…” Arravir looks at Chance’s curious, bright hazel eyes. “I’m sorry, this is rude.”

“No, go ahead,” Chance urges, leaning closer to her. 

“I can’t imagine the world has been kind to you,” Arravir whispers. “How do you...cope being the only person in the world like you? I have been...struggling with that question myself lately.” Her voice nearly extinguishes itself it grows so quiet. 

“Oh!” Chance’s voice sounds like something popping. She stares at her feet. “Hmm, I mean, I’m not a religious icon? So that’s different but… My mom’s family did cut her off. Orlesian blood purity and all of that.” She shrugs. “Fuck ‘em.” 

And then, she is grinning again. “I guess that’s my answer? Fuck ‘em. I don’t need anyone to tell me how to be. I just...am. I always have been. Never felt weird about it until people told me I should, you know?”

“I...I think I do,” Arravir says slowly. “Fuck 'em,” she echoes, and Chance gives a whoop, patting her on the back. Thom is sanding the chair again, obviously trying to look occupied while they are having this personal discussion.

She smiles. “Thank you. That’s something close to what I have been thinking. My People have this saying, ‘ _We are the Dalish. Keepers of the lost lore, walkers of the lonely path. We are the last of the Elvhenan, and never again shall we submit.’_ ”

A pause settles over them from the strength of the ancient phrase.

“Chance, I think… Just because it is a _lonely_ path, it can still be the _right_ one. I am me.” She laughs, and her head spins again. The voices of the Well seem to have found that harmony inside of her once more; it feels like it is echoing against her ribs. “Ir tel’him. I am me again.” She laughs again, and she feels her face may split from grinning.

With another cheer, Chance wraps her in a hug, squeezing so tight it is hard to breathe. Arravir stiffens until the other woman practically leaps away. “Sorry! Just got excited.”

“It’s alright,” she replies, weakly leaning back to return to gesture.

Then, she stands unsteadily, once again leaning against the workbench. “I need sleep, I think, though. I should be...going.”

“You sure you can go on your own? You’re lookin’ a bit…”

“I’ll be fine,” she says quickly, forcing herself forward. Black spots appear in her vision as she climbs the stairs to the main hall and past the throne that she has sat and passed judgment from so many times, occupying so strange a place in this history. But she is making peace with it. 

After stumbling up the stairs to her quarters, pausing to sit on several steps and catch her breath, she barely manages to take her boots off before falling into a deep sleep the moment her head hit the pillows.

* * *

  
  


In her dream, she is falling, twisting through the currents of air that whip her hair and her purple dress around her. The world fades to black like the sun has been dropped behind the mountains -- but they are not mountains, they are the edge of existence -- like color does not exist here. In an instant, she shatters upon the ground like glass, scattering to the furthest corners of this undefined landscape.

And then, she is standing. Standing on bare feet like it is a cold balcony. Or maybe the dusty square in a cramped city. Or at the muddy bank of a stream with her staff in her hands and a mentor’s words at her ears.

Or like she is none of those places. Like those are all cut into shards too, skittering against the nothingness but growing louder with each second. 

She runs after some triangular shard bouncing away from her, and then she cries out as a sharp pain cuts across the thick soles of her feet. Reaching down in the blackness, she feels the warm blood, smells the rust of it -- and ash, too, like the field she had burned down. The blood is between her toes, and then it is lapping at the top of her foot. It is at her ankles, sloshing dangerously, pulling back and forth like some angry tide, like Andruil has gone mad again in her sport and is quaking the oceans for it and --

And she is drowning. The water swirls, whispering and opaque, like that of the vir’abelasan, but miles deeper. Plunging lower, the glass cuts her as she falls, slicing her into ribbons, and she imagines herself turning into streams of light instead of the blood that pours gracelessly from her small body.

She splinters again and again and again. Each time she is running after them, and these foreign voices grow louder, mocking her. One of the voices is her, she thinks. All of the voices are her. None of them are her.

Again and again and again. Until finally, palms bloody, she places two shards of the glass together and they seem to spark like flint and stone, singing with those overwhelming voies, and then they are some larger whole. She sees some corner of her face in the glass.

She laughs and runs through the valleys of this Beyond that reinvent themselves with each tumultuous second. The glass continues with each joining to smash together as if they had never fallen apart...but, no, that’s not quite right. Maybe they are better for being apart. The image is clearer. As more and more of her comes into view in its reflection, the image of herself flickers like candlelight, and shifts to some new portrait.

She is Lyra, round cheeked and smiling in her purple dress. Casting up lights in the shadows of her words to invent new colors with the power she hardly understands.

The flame in the glass shifts, and she is Arravir. Strong, scarred features and a gaze heavy with ghosts that whisper in the spaces between her bones.

Suddenly, the image pops into life again, and it is someone else entirely. It is not Arravir, it is not Lyra. It is someone that _looks_ like her, like the Orlesians have decided to wear her face now. This woman is more round-cheeked than she, and though they share so much in their appearance, there is a kind of innocence that perches on her brow. There is no scar across her cheek. But there is no vallaslin, either. Her clothes are simple in make, with no indication of dalish styles.

She understands.

This version of her never left Denerim, was never _beaten_ and _chased_ from Denerim 

Arravir hates her, hates this not-her, hates the illusion of gentleness that must have been her life. This version of her never learned of her fire.

As if on cue, there is the warming glow of her familiar flames traveling up the length of her shaking arms. With a yell that feels like _more_ than a yell, like the sound has gotten inside of her and is ripping the whole Beyond apart, she shatters the glass, once and for all.

Finally, she shatters, too, just as the sun seems to unfurl its wings again, and the pieces of her twinkle in the new day. Somewhere, a bird begins its old songs with renewed vigor before the sound soars away and away.

* * *

  
  
  


And then, Arravir wakes up, her hands reaching out through the bedsheets for something to hold onto as she gasps desperately in the hollow space of her chambers. 

As she sits up, her eyes grow wide taking in the early morning light stretching through the latticed windows across the floor. Her head is heavy, but the screaming has stopped, and sitting in its place is knowledge. A location. A weapon. An altar not yet worn down by the years amid canopies of yellow-green leaves that she must commune with.

Finally, _finally,_ after all these days of empty, searching fury, she knows the answer. The vir'abelasan at last whispers tenderly one voice at a time, like an old friend, rather than the furious crowds of a mob. She does not have to strain to focus on one voice. It is already there.

Dorian had been right. Chance had been right. _She_ had been right. After all of Abelas' dismissals that she was not "his" people...the Well has demanded that she have respect for herself.

To Arravir, the answer is this: she has been fighting two lifetimes over every conflicting identity inside of her. She could not confront all that she was and is, and so she could not even begin to accept everything that she _could_ be. So it held back on her, and would only start to unravel its own secrets when she was able to bare her own and stand proud with every shattered part of herself.

She is not grateful for the bloody trail behind her, not grateful for the tragedy that has been her unquiet companion from the earth. She does not thank the Templars or the drunk human with his bottle of drink or Corypheus for the explosion at the Conclave. But these things _happened._ And so she is Arravir. And so she is every weight that has been placed on her ever-rigid shoulders over countries and through decades.

And there is...one other thing she has suppressed still, one other she has not accepted. Da'ghilana's anxious pawing of the ground scrapes against her mind, and she realizes she must confront that today, too. Soon.

She breathes, loosening her grip on the sheets. Glancing around the room, expecting the environment to reflect this change that has boiled over within her, she finds only a quietly simmering morning. Dawn has only just graced the valleys where Skyhold is perched. Rubbing her eyes, she realizes that she must have slept the whole day away.

Everything is as she has left it. Her staff is leaning against the headboard. Deshanna’s letter is on the bedside table. There are crooked piles of books all over the floor from both her and Dorian carrying them in by the armful.

So, Arravir reasons that the only thing that must enact this change is her. She slowly swings her legs out of bed, having a quiet moment of reverie for the way her feet touch the wood. It is solid and real and it does not slice her into oblivion as the dream had done. 

There is so much that she can do, so much that she _must_ and _will_ do. Hesitating for a moment, she grins, feeling sure of the power of the Well that is only secondary to the power that has always been inside of her.

Arravir pushes herself into a standing position and moves with an urgency, darting to get dressed, to get food, to go to the gardens and pray -- and to hastily grab a messenger and tell them to order all of the advisors to the War Room as soon as possible.

  
  
  


* * *

They all arrive quickly, Josephine bustling in first, a messenger trailing behind her catching various scrolls and folded bits of parchment that slip from the pile loaded into her arms. Cullen arrives shortly after, walking with great purpose, stilling for a moment to hold a silent conversation with her. He seems to be asking her something; she inclines her head imperceptibly as if to say _I've been waiting for you._

Leliana and Morrigan push through the door simultaneously, deep in conversation. Arravir’s gaze lingers on them curiously, knowing the two travelled and fought together during the Fifth Blight, but they have hardly publicly engaged each other while working for the Inquisition. There is an ease about them, however, like spark in Leliana’s face that Arravir had seen yesterday. Morrigan even has a small smile on her face -- and not her usual smirk, not the gloating face of a cat who has trapped a mouse between its paws. It is the unguarded ease, the gentle lilting surprise that one feels at remembering the comfort of a friend. 

Arravir even thinks she hears Reegan’s name spoken in their now-lowered voices, and she realizes that she is staring. There is something in the air as she steps up to the table, across from the four humans who she has spent countless hours worrying and debating and forging new paths with in this very room. Each of them hush and straighten their postures, looking at her attentively, eagerly.

Each of them have a quality to their eyes, to their faces now, that had not been there three years ago -- or maybe even three days ago. Morrigan and Leliana have a lightness to them, Josephine a confidence in the way she spreads papers across the stretch of table in front of her, as if poised with a sword at the start of a duel, ready to leap into action. Cullen’s arms are crossed over his chest, but there is something soft to his face. He looks at her with a strange expression, like he now understands something he never has before.

They have all emerged from this winter that threatened to bury them, she thinks. On the other side of the table, silhouetted by the still tentatively rising sun, the four of them seem to exchange a knowing look. Arravir wonders how much they have talked these past days while she has searched and raged and debated and collapsed in on herself before finding her feet again. 

They all say nothing, the silence thick in the cold air around them. But there is a warmth inside of her.

“I understand our next steps,” Arravir says boldly, bracing her arms in front of her on the table, rooting herself. 

“Then...the Well…?” Morrigan begins.

“Don’t be surprised that I had the ability within me to decipher it, Morrigan,” Arravir warns, fixing her gaze on the golden eyes of her Arcane Advisor.

Morrigan purses her lips together for a moment before smirking that familiar, knowing smile again and tilting her head in curiosity, as if only finally _really_ noticing Arravir. “Of course, Inquisitor.” She parts her dark, heart shaped lips a moment, perched on the edge of speech. “It was not so much your competence I doubted as much as the speed with which you could accomplish this.” With a slight shrug, she adds, “Time is our most valuable ally, and we waste it in these discussions. Explain what you have learned.”

Arravir narrows her eyes, keeping Morrigan in suspense a moment longer, as if to demonstrate her control. And then, she leans over the War Table and, after a moment of deliberation, points to a location near the southwest of Orlais, from where they had all just journeyed. It is in the outskirts of the Wilds, hopefully beyond the fight that still rages there, but she knows the delay that venturing out there again -- even if it is with a small party -- will cause.

She explains the visions dappled with words and instructions that have filled her mind. She is sure of nothing more than she is of the truth in this direction. It _must_ be her that goes.

To her surprise, none of them question her perception; they all slowly acknowledge that it is the best lead they have. And more than that.

Josephine places a marker where Arravir’s finger has been on the map. “Our allies will be reinvigorated to know that the Inquisitor is in pursuit of a weapon to rival Coypheus’ might,” she says shrewdly.

“Do you have any clues as to what this weapon may be? Shall your party have reinforcements? Our strongest horses?” Cullen asks.

“I don’t know what it will be yet, but…” Arravir trails off. “I don’t believe those will be necessary, Commander. Though I _do_ think that there is something else, _someone_ else I need to speak to still.” She turns. “Morrigan, I will meet with you in the gardens tomorrow morning to discuss this further.”

“Tomorrow?” Morrigan asks, taken aback. “This day is yet young. ‘Twould be best that we not delay any longer than we have already if we are to venture back towards the Wilds we emerged from.” 

Arravir bites her lip, resisting her urge to pick some unnecessary fight. She swallows her irritation and reminds herself that it is not an irrational question. “I understand your concern. We will beat Corypheus in the current time table, I promise.” At that, she looks from face to face across from her, making sure all of them understand the depth of her conviction that she will force victory no matter the obstacles, no matter the cost. “But I have other things to discuss. Other things I gathered you all here for today.”

That earns her a scattering of curious looks. Josephine clears her throat quietly in surprise, shuffling papers on her board and smoothing them out, preparing some new set of notes. Leliana and Cullen shift almost imperceptibly. Morrigan’s eyebrows are raised though nothing else about her posturing changes.

Arravir pushes herself back from the War Table and takes a deep breath. She watches a pair of snow white birds flutter past the large windows beyond them all and she wonders, briefly, of all the other gentle lives that scurry throughout this valley, untroubled by this stronghold of the human Chantry. 

But her world will always be wrought by the Chantry, as the Spymaster had whispered with a heart breaking in her throat the day before. So Arravir turns to her. 

“Leliana, I am officially supporting your campaign for Divine,” Arravir states proudly, and she watches the shock burst across Leliana’s shadowed face. Her arms fidget and her smile is bordering euphoria before she seems to wrangle it into a wry, detached one. These glimpses of another woman, a happier one, have become to Arravir at once both strange and distressing. She wonders if the Spymaster ever forgets herself who she is beneath her carefully constructed mask and armored heart.

With an incline of her hooded head, Leliana speaks at last. “You honor me, Inquisitor.” 

“Don’t forget what we spoke of yesterday,” Arravir says seriously.

“I never forget,” Leliana assures her.

With another nod between the pair of them, Arravir feels again the indescribable weight she has wrestled with all these weeks and years pressing down on her chest. It is larger than her, larger even than this whole room, and bears the constant scrutiny, hatred and yet idolatry that has been thrown at her feet. “With that in mind…” she begins, and she places one hand against the War Table again, taking a shaking breath.

Feeling their gazes sharp as broken glass against her, she looks up. _Stare down the world that would rather have you bow,_ Deshanna’s voice urges in her mind. A sound close to a sob escaped her chest before she can strangle the fear again.

“I’m...tired.” Each of them seem to stiffen in some way, like a line is pulled taut within them and has rendered them speechless, hanging off of what she will say next. So Arravir remembers the promises she has made.

She is alone in who she is and what her destiny will be, but that does not mean that this mission, this Inquisition, will profit from that solitude of her existence. Holding each of their eyes meaningfully, trying to convey years’ worth of respect and bonds that transcends words, she collects herself.

“I am _so_ tired being this symbol, being the only person here who knows what it is like to live in this world and not be a human. This room is…” she thinks to say that it is painful to her, but that is not quite true, so she swallows and closes her eyes briefly. “You all know what you mean to me, and what your work means to the Inquisition and to the world that we have been rebuilding. With everything we have done, I don’t -- I can’t _imagine_ our will be done the second Corypheus falls, can you?”

Without waiting for a response, she continues. “We are changing the lives of everyone. This is more than a Chantry operation -- Creators, it is more than the dalish, too. Dwarves and qunari and the Avaar and Chasind and...It’s selfish of us to think that we can speak for them all about what kind of world they need. And I _cannot_ keep doing this if I am the only non-human or non-Andrastian in this room, or in other places where important decisions are being made every day by the Inquisition.”

Her voice is getting stronger, she realizes. More bold, more sure, revitalized with the _rightness_ of what she is doing. “I know the power my word has. I know that because I have placed my support with you, you will be Divine, Leliana. And when that happens...I request that your replacement represents someone else in Thedas who has not been represented in this room before then. I just...cannot keep being this,” she reiterates. 

Josephine speaks up, somewhat timidly, and Arravir thinks that her eyes look red and bothered in the light of this shy morning. “That request is beyond reasonable, Inquisitor, and we will see to it. The world looks to the Inquisition, so we should see that the Inquisition _looks like_ the world.”

Arravir feels herself relax as she smiles across the table at her friend. And then, Cullen speaks up. He is staring fixedly at the table, eyes narrowed as if entrenched in disgust at some unforeseen thing. “We should have done something sooner. This feels obvious in hindsight.”

Arravir looks between them, waiting for someone to argue, ready to fight back if necessary, as she always has been. “I...I appreciate you both saying that.”

Cullen looks up then, face softened in the space of a single second, and the strength of his gaze makes her breath hitch in her throat. “I have been thinking hard on such issues since...a game of chess I had the other day,” he says quietly. 

Her mouth parts slightly, and she wonders if she has any words left to say at all. The moment seems to sing between them, as the voices now do in her mind. They are so vulnerable for those few seconds before she clears her throat and looks over the others.

“Tis a noble request,” Morrigan chimes in. “I admit I had my doubts about my place here, since I have little care for the Maker or Andraste. It is ambitious, certainly, and...crucial that we do not become too set in our blunderings.”

“I agree with the others,” Leliana says at last. “The Commander is right. This oversight should have been avoided, but now is our chance to change things. I already have a replacement in mind -- They are elven, though I will seek your approval, of course, Inquisitor, before confirming anything.” Stepping forward, Leliana pushes back her hood, letting her bright red hair free. Arravir realizes the only other time she had seen her head uncovered was at the Winter Palace, but though bare faced then, the Spymaster had still been wearing some kind of mask -- one forged to survive the Game. Now, she looks free. “And as for when I am Divine...I am going to change everything.”

“I know,” Arravir says, leaning forward and extending a hand across the table and its map of these countries they have spent years determining the fates of. Leliana takes it, her hand surprisingly warm. They hold on tight, just a moment longer than Josephine had instructed so long ago was polite to do so.

When they break apart, Arravir once again takes in the faces of these four humans, their strength and endurance written across every line of their faces. She had never expected three years ago to ever care for a single human, let alone so many of them. They have all had so much to learn, but they have all proved to be willing to. 

“Thank you all,” she says, voice commanding again. “You are dismissed.”

As they slowly come down from this time they spent enraptured in revelation after revelation, Arravir suddenly addresses them again. “Morrigan, I will see you in the morning as discussed.” She pauses, heart beating so heavy in her chest that it hurts. “Commander...Do you have time to talk now?”

Cullen freezes where he stands, half moved around the table. When he finds her pleading gaze, the tension from earlier returns, so thick in the air that everything seems to move slower. The moment brushes against ancient music.

“Of-- of course,” he says, seeming to remember his feet again and walking to stand in front of her. The door opens and closes and opens again behind her as she stares up at him. 

There is so much still for them to talk about, so much discomfort and yet so much she wants to confide as well. But there is only one way to explain this secret that has been clawing its way free recently. 

“Will you...accompany me to the stables?” Arravir asks, pushing a strand of unruly hair behind her ear.

Cullen appears confused, of course, but he simply walks to the door and pulls it open, gesturing politely, but wordlessly, to her.

* * *

  
  
  


**SEVENTEEN YEARS EARLIER**

It was deep in the summer months in the Free Marches, where the coastal climate pulled in great swaths of humid air that made her lungs struggle with each breath. Despite this, she was freezing, tiny body shivering violently, half buried in the reeds at the muddy bank of a creek. Their dry stalks rustled as she thrashed about. She had so little energy, but her body rebelled against its crumbling flesh anyway.

It was 9:26 Dragon, though she could not have guessed the year with trying. It had felt an entire age had passed and maybe the Maker himself had, too, since there had been singing and dancing and drumming in a far-off alienage. Had that really been her? In that dress the color of flowers she had not seen in so long now? The winter had evaporated into summer with nothing moderate left to settle in-between.

Everything was stale in her dry mouth edged by her cracked lips that had stopped bleeding to scab over. She opened her eyes, a tiny groan escaping from the back of her throat at how bright the sun was blazing behind the reeds. Her head tilted though she could not muster the will to lower her head enough to drink.

She could just see the line of her side becoming waist and then her hip, and the way that each bone protruded unnaturally, like the most disturbing of mountain ranges. Her dark skin -- tinged a sickly grey -- reached over the peaks of her bones with a stretched-thin desperation. She blinked a few times, trying to adjust her swimming vision. Her head pounded like something was in her skull trying to break free.

There was nothing. She was nothing. Death was so close but she could not even fathom what that meant. 

As her eyes begged her for sleep, for release, for the nothing that dragged at her every day, she found that there was no longer a voice telling her to fight. Or if there was, it was not louder than the pain. To sleep and not wake up...it was difficult to understand what was wrong with that.

So she closed her eyes in that cruel heat and let the Beyond take her away and away.

* * *

At first, there was no thought. Just feeling. Something damp pressing repeatedly on her forehead, beads of cool water slipping down the plains of her face. Something soft beneath her. It had been so long since she had felt something soft.

And then, her consciousness came at her in lurches, like a tidal wave that dragged her into the undertow of memory. 

Her eyes were closed, still too heavy to open. But beneath her was not reeds or mud or grass at all. It was _soft_ like nothing she could remember. There were voices but they slipped across her mind without the meaning sticking.

Slowly, the tide shifted. Her world felt less like drowning. She opened her eyes. Figures seemed to shift in the light, arms reaching across her, voices suddenly raising too. Everything, everything. She closed her eyes again.

This happened a few more times. One voice, solid as the oldest trees, was constant beside her, never raising in volume but still carrying. Like the hahren on his stage looking out over the dancing masses.

Time slipped on, and when she opened her eyes again and held them open, she panicked. Multiple different hands were touching her -- one pressing a rag to her feverish forehead, another running a hand through her hair, catching and tugging on her scalp. Yet another hand was touching her arm and a sharp pain shot through her from a deep cut inflicted weeks ago. A hand on the back of her neck, tangling in the brittle hair there and propping her head up. A bowl in front of her mouth and she was drinking something warm, an unconscious groan begging for more falling out of her lips. More and more and more hands touching and pressing and tearing and feeding and the pain continued and --

Suddenly she was on her feet, throwing out fistfuls of the fire at random as she charged forward with no direction but away. Her spindly legs trembled frantically with each failing step before she tripped over a tree root and her world spun in shades of green and brown. She was in the woods somewhere at midday-- had there been a forest near the river she had been laying beside? She could not remember. 

Panting on the ground, trying to get away, there were more bodies looking on at her, reaching out. Then, she froze with a realization.

They were elves. Every single one. With designs on their faces -- that sparked a memory. Giggling conversations in the alienage about the elves leaping around in the woods with tattoos on their faces to scare off the shemlens. She felt sick at the thought, like she had stolen those memories from someone else.

Slowly, she turned over and sat up, taking them all in with wide eyes. They were wearing armor and clothing with designs she had never dreamed of before, like the warriors of an ancient story. The air smelled of leather and spices and ash. Her stomach groaned for more of the broth they had fed her, but her hands bunched around the grass tightly as she looked frantically from curious face to curious face.

“Andaran atish’an, da’len,” the steady, warm voice from before said. She turned and saw a tall and muscular woman with dark skin and eyes step forward. When she crawled backwards to keep the distance between them, the woman tilted her head in curiosity. There was a crown of tight black curls on her head that shifted slightly with the movement. Her face was long with prominent cheekbones and eyes that were surprisingly gentle. “It’s good to see you awake. You have been sleeping many days now.”

She said nothing. This did not deter the woman, who pushed forward. “My name is Deshanna. What is yours?”

Again, she said nothing. After a pause, she shook her head.

“Do you not have a name, or do you not want to share it with me?”

She said nothing. She was not sure how to answer.

That did confuse the woman, who narrowed her eyes before eyeing the space between them. Then, she said, “I am going to sit down, okay?” And she did, slowly lowering herself a few feet away from her and crossing her legs. Some of the others hovered nearby.

“Do you have somewhere or someone we can help you find? A home to get back to?” Deshanna asked.

She looked at the ground, hands still clutching at the grass and the undergrowth nervously. That feeling of nausea returned -- that any life she had had before was burnt to ash and that it had never belonged to her at all. She shook her head.

“That’s alright,” Deshanna said quietly.

“Keeper, can’t she talk?” a young boy’s voice called out from the circle forming around the two of them. Her head jolted to the side and she saw a boy of thirteen or fourteen with light brown skin and wavy black hair that skirted his shoulders. He did not have tattoos yet, but his face was pulled between confusion and humor. 

Deshanna held up a hand to silence him without looking away from her. “I am the Keeper of this group. We are called Clan Lavellan. We can take care of you, if you want to stay with us.”

She backed up, dragging herself across the grass and dirt, until she realized that she was only drawing closer to the boy who had spoken. 

“Hey there,” the boy said. “You shouldn’t be scared of us. Unlike what the shemlens say, we don’t _actually_ do blood magic rituals naked under the full moon every ---”

“Samahl!” Deshanna said, low and clipped. “You are not helping.” 

The boy shrugged. “Just trying to ease the tension, Keeper.” He turned sharply to look at her and gesture. “Looks like _she_ can do magic, though. For the rituals.” He winked at her, and an older woman beside him grabbed his arm and began whispering something in that elven tongue that she knew none of.

The girl was staring at him, wide-eyed in horrified confusion. She pulled one arm in front of her protectively and balled a hand into a fist to summon her familiar fire. As the warmth stirred in her chest, she exhaled smoke and felt the sparks between her fingers building and rushing to --

She froze when Deshanna was suddenly right in front of her, holding a small flame in the palm of her own hand. Looking from the Keeper to the others, who did not react in alarm, she slowly stirred the flames again and held a matching fire in her own trembling hand. 

Deshanna smiled broadly. Swiftly moving her hand upward, she began tracing some unseen, complex symbol and the air just above their heads seemed to warp and turn grey as snowflakes began to drift down. She held out her other hand to catch them, shocked when she felt them, real as a mid-winter storm, grace her skin. 

“You have a gift, da’len,” Deshanna urged, still smiling. “I have it too. I can teach you everything I know. Do you want to learn?”

She looked from Deshanna’s soft grin to the teasing boy to every other face gathered around them now -- so different in shape and skin tone and age, but somehow none of them felt out of place -- and felt something she had not felt in a year, maybe two years.

It was the urge to stay, rather than to run.

Deshanna reached out her hand and laid her palm out to her. An invitation.

It had been so long since she had been wanted. Since she had been shown a hand outstretched rather than one wielding a weapon or a tightly closed fist. Part of her was still waiting, as though backed up to a cliff, for the rocks beneath her to fall. She was waiting for the illusion to drop, as it always did when demons mocked her in dreams. 

But she slowly reached out her hand and took the woman’s anyway.

And when Deshanna clasped hers tightly, it suddenly wasn’t enough. She practically lunged the distance between them and fell ungracefully half into Deshanna’s lap and slumped against her. The Keeper stiffened for a moment before her strong arms wrapped her in a tight embrace.

“You’re safe now, da’len,” the Keeper whispered into her hair. “You’re safe.”

  
  


* * *

**PRESENT DAY**

Arravir and Cullen walk in silence out of the main hall, though they keep in step with each other. She can feel him glancing at her occasionally, but she says nothing and tries to keep staring ahead. There is a nervous energy clashing with the sense of elated purpose clashing inside her gut.

Outside, the sky is at last clear. There are some clouds still hanging over the mountains, like a reminder or some ill omen yet to come. But above them is a blue so vibrant she has not seen it since looking up between the massive leaves of those colossal, whispering trees of the Arbor Wilds. There are eyes on her again as there always are, but she thinks _let them look. Let them see that this is how I walk into the future I am shaping._

“I--” She begins when they reach the stables, but finds she does not know how to start unpacking all the grief and anger inside of her. She never has known, really, how to open up without letting the fire eat them all whole. “Will you...help me brush Ghi?”

Cullen hesitates, as if he is trying to determine if she is serious. The hart is attempting to scratch his head against the thick wooden post at his stall door, though he has met no success as his antlers crash and bump against it instead. He lets out a low braying noise as his hands overturn a metal bucket hanging just within the stall and various brushes plummet to the ground. “I’m not sure that _he_ would like that.”

“He’s going to have to,” Arravir replies, slipping through the stall door and shoving her gloves into a pocket in her coat. She places her hands around the hart’s bony face to still him. “It’s me,” she says, and Da’ghilana calms immediately, head drooping and ears twitching delightedly.

Arravir trails a hand down his neck and then turns to pick up the contents of the overturned bucket. As she reaches for a square brush, she notices Cullen hesitating at the stall door. Standing straight and looking at him curiously, she says “Come in. Hang your mantle by the door, though, he may try to eat it.”

Cullen sighs exasperatedly. “He certainly tried during our trip back from the Arbor Wilds. Maker, I can’t imagine it actually tastes good.”

“He will eat anything available to him,” Arravir says more to Da’ghilana than to him, rubbing the hart’s shaggy white fur across his chest contentedly.

The hinges creak and Cullen steps through, armor looking bare without the added fluff of his usual mantle. As she almost always is, she is surprised at how lean his unarmored form is. It is as though, when armored, he is trying to convince not only others but himself of his own imagined stature. It is another layer of protection, she knows. 

Arravir is pulled from her thoughts when Da’ghilana huffs loudly beside her and begins scraping the ground with his front right hoof in indignation. 

“Hey,” she says lowly, a warning, placing a hand on the side of the hart’s head. He yanks his head from her grasp and takes a step back, nearly bumping into the back of the stall.

Rolling her eyes, Arravir reaches into another deep pocket of her coat and pulls out a small green apple. It is imperfect, with a few brown spots, but Da’ghilana will not care. “Feed this to him.” Holding it out to Cullen, he takes it slowly and places it flat on his now ungloved palm. Tucking his thumb close to the rest of his hand, he raises it and catches the hart’s attention. Da’ghilana sucks the apple in with one breath and then snaps it in half with a large _crunch._ A few small pieces slip from his mouth as his jaw starts to move sideways, slowly grinding the apple to mush. There is something close to foam on his lips as his short fluffy burst of a tail swishes happily.

“Stroke the fur just on the tip of his nose, or the patch between his antlers,” Arravir says. “It is the softest fur on his body.”

Cullen obeys again, reaching tentatively up to the top of the hart’s thin head where the wide antlers fan out. He strokes the sensitive skin and fur there and Da’ghilana tilts his head sideways to allow better access. Arravir sees a small, appreciative smile on his lips. 

Ducking beneath the antlers on the opposite side of him, she raises the square brush and begins near his shoulders. His winter coat is remarkably thick, making him look double the size that he is in summer months. The stall seems much too cramped now between the three of them and the hart’s seasonal coat and perpetual overlarge personality. A horse in a neighboring stall extends their neck and lets out a high-pitched whinny, as if simply reminding the whole fortress that they are there. Da’ghilana shrieks in kind, nearly knocking Cullen’s head with his antlers as he brays his reply.

They take to brushing in silence. As he works, there are shifting bars of light that cross his face from where the sun presses through the gaps in the wooden roof above them. There is something endearing about the dedication that stiffens his face, working out the tangles and dirt in her hart’s fur. 

Arravir looks then to the ground between Da’ghilana’s shifting feet as she thinks. There is no dirty snow here as there is around so much of Skyhold’s courtyards. Instead, the loose dirt is strewn with wet, flattened straw. There are bits of that straw she pulls free from his fur with a huffed out laugh. It is as though he has spent the last several days doing nothing but rolling in it. 

As she thinks over how much trouble, how much silly mischief he gets into, and why she wanted to bring Cullen here in the first place, her heart grows heavier until it is a physical pain pushing against her ribcage. She exhales slowly, counting in her head to exert some form of control. 

Switching the brush to her non-dominant hand, she looks down at the Anchor that glows in its perpetual wound across her flesh. Swallowing, Arravir closes the hand into a fist. 

“I wasn’t the only person from Clan Lavellan at the Conclave.”

It lands without preamble, as so much of her declarations often do. Her bottom lip twitches, though she tries to remain impartial in expression.

“What?” Cullen asks softly on the other side of Da’ghilana. He has frozen in place, looking at her. 

She meets his eyes, and does not know what to do with the concern she sees there. So she deflects with logic. “Why would a Keeper send only their First without any sort of protection? Think of how vulnerable that leaves the future of the Clan.”

Cullen’s lips are parted, and he nods, understanding the explanation, though still clearly unsure of what to say. “Who went with you?” he asks, seeming to find it the safe question to voice.

“His name was...Samahl,” Arravir says stiffly. It is the first time she has said his name aloud since that day when the mountainside turned into a crater, when a supposed peace summit became a war zone. “He was a hunter with the Clan. Close to my own age. And...he was my friend.” Standing straighter, speaking almost with accusation, she adds, “I do not need to tell you what happened to him that day. We all lived through it.”

“That we did,” he replies quietly. “The confusion of that day...I do not dare to think of all the awful thoughts that crossed my mind that day, the anger. Everyone was grieving someone.” His voice is edged with something close to anger and disbelief. And then, his shoulders slump. “What was Samahl like?”

Arravir can’t help the smile that tugs at her lips at the memory of his fierce laughter and biting words. “He was...bold and brash and _funny_ , but sometimes he could be so _annoying_ . Everything was _his_ business. When I first joined the Clan, he would constantly antagonize me, as if waiting to see when I would snap and call lightning to strike him.” 

Shaking her head, she clenched her jaw at a memory that drew slight sparks of anger forth. “When we receive our vallaslin, we must remain perfectly still. We cannot cry out in pain or be deterred in any way. It is a test of maturity and of strength, because receiving them is an honor and a promise.” Even just speaking of their traditions so freely again calms something inside of her. She pulls another piece of straw from Da’ghilana’s fur and pauses. “Samahl...he kept telling jokes the day i was receiving mine. I didn’t react to his poor attempts at humor, but then he...started saying stupid, teasing things to get a rise out of me. Do not get me wrong, he was not _overly_ cruel with his words, but...it still worked.” 

Arravir hangs her head a moment in shame. “I snapped and turned to talk back to him. And in that moment the ritual was finished. I had to walk around for a month, going about my duties, _living_ , with _half_ a face of vallaslin.”

“That must have been mortifying,” Cullen replies sympathetically. “Though I must admit that I am surprised your Keeper allowed him to behave in such a way.”

“Oh, Deshanna was very upset with him, but she and the hahren still wanted to use it as a learning experience for me. I was already Dehsanna’s top choice for First at the time, and so she wanted me to prove that I would not let ‘childish insults pull me from my course.’” Arravir resumes her brushing, but glances over the hart’s back to look at Cullen. “Though Samahl was not allowed the day I received the other half of my vallaslin. I completed the ritual in peace.”

Clearing her throat, she wipes a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. She is sniffling in the slight chill in the air. “I confronted him one day about why he was so harsh with me, when I considered us close. I asked him why I was not good enough for him.” 

“And he looked at me like I was speaking a different tongue. He just said that some people among the Clan questioned the Keeper’s judgment for a while in naming me First. There were very few of them, as Clan Lavellan has always been so welcoming to me, but …” She trails off, gut twisting. “Some thought I was and would always be an outsider because I was from the cities. I was not born among the Clan -- or any Clan. So Samahl said he wanted to help me toughen up to people like them, who actually meant it. I remember telling him I did not need him to see cruelty as a key to my ‘development.’”

There are a few more tears then, stinging in her eyes. “He apologized and said to me that he looked forward to the day when he could call me Keeper. He was crying. I had never seen him cry before. And he said that he hoped that until that day he could call me his best friend. He was so much kinder after that, though he still teased me relentlessly.”

“You’ve said before that you never had siblings.” Cullen looks thoughtful. “But it sounds almost like you had a brother.”

“I...I have never thought of it that way. I don’t know. Maybe.” She buries her face in her sleeve for a moment and takes a few staggered deep breaths, gulping in the mountain air.

Then, before Cullen can think to respond, she leans against Da’ghilana and speaks. “Samahl loved the Clan’s halla, though he was not one of their caretakers. They loved him, too. One day, a hunt went wrong, and several of our hunters were lost, nearly mauled by bears. Samahl was one of them. But then, a miracle happened. A halla escaped from our enclosure and began racing through the woods. No one could keep up with it, and we were not sure we wanted to, since most of the hunting party had not returned.”

Rubbing a hand lovingly down the hart’s neck she continues. “That halla found Samahl alone and injured in the woods and led him back to the Clan. He named that halla ‘Da’ghilana’ that day. It was his ‘ _little guide_.’”

Cullen looks curiously at the hart between them who seems to only tolerate his company. He places his free hand on Da’ghilana’s back appreciatively. “I’ve only ever heard campfire stories about small miracles like that. I didn’t actually believe any of them were true.”

“I remember that day vividly,” Arravir says, nodding to confirm its truth. And then, she laughs lightly. “The halla Da’ghilana and Samahl were practically inseparable. Once, when we were trading with a small group of humans -- which we did sometimes -- one of them started making comments about the halla, calling them ‘deer.’ Samahl just roared with laughter and said, ‘Stupid shemlen, haven’t you ever seen a griffon before?’” Both of them pause before breaking into timid laughter, and Arravir realizes how happy she is to hear the sound of his. “He was so insistent and persuasive...I truly think those humans left half-wondering if griffons really were extinct.”

“He must have been quite the speaker, considering the halla have an obvious lack of wings,” Cullen replies good-naturedly. 

Arravir nods, her laughter winding down. She can feel the yawning chasm of her grief again, the way it threatens her with a labyrinth she is designed to fail. Grief demands so loudly that one should lose themself in it. She has tried to cope by denying its existence. “The Keeper said that the halla Da’ghilana died around the same time Samahl did.”

Again, she knows that she is cutting a moment in half, ripping out its goodness. She knows she has no finesse. “I suppose I named him --” she gestures to her stubborn hart with her head “--with the same name was...to keep some part of him alive. And I…” She trails off for a moment, looking out into the courtyard and the throngs of people crossing in every direction. “I keep waiting for someone to call him the wrong animal and I can say ‘ _Stupid shemlen, haven’t you ever seen a griffon before_?’”Her laugh is nervous this time, and she hiccups as she wipes her face with her sleeve again with annoyance.

“He sounds like quite a character,” Cullen says softly, and she looks back to him. “I’m sorry, Arravir.”

“He was an _ass_ ,” she practically spits out, surprised suddenly at her own vitriol. “But...I miss him.” 

There is a dull thump as Cullen drops the brush he is holding and then both of his bare hands are resting on Da’ghilana’s back. As he has so many times lately, he looks like he wants to do more, but restrains himself. “You’ve...never spoken of him before.”

“I haven’t,” She admits, relieved he understands some of what she has set out to do today. “Well, you know I’m not good at...accepting the things I’ve lost.” She wonders if both of them are thinking of her awkwardly dropping the story of her birth name and city origin a year ago. How she had said that less than five other people in all of Thedas knew, because she had buried it so deep.

“Neither am I,” he says instead of dragging more of her own grief out into the open air. Her mind switches instead to the time he paced his office in the blaze of the late afternoon sun, confessing of the demons that haunted him still. Her breathing comes more rapidly. 

Across from her, he glances away, as if trying to summon the courage for something. He nods almost imperceptibly, seeming to have decided on it. “I am -- What I need to know is if _you_ are one of those things that I have lost, Arra.”

Oh. 

It strikes her as such a simple statement, and yet her chest shudders to life. She blinks a few times as the shock slowly reaches every part of her. It has, all of it, been from fear. Both of them have just been choking on their fear for more than a week now since she had run out of the War Room, forcing the wooden door to slam just to feel the reverberations in her chest.

There has been so much love in her life that was mistranslated in its action. Her father had been scared of losing her, until so much of her childhood had been four crumbling walls pressing in on her. Samahl had been scared of her not being recognized for her worth, so he had prodded her insecurities to encourage her to be more bold in proving herself.

And Cullen...had been scared of losing her, and of Arravir losing _herself._ It is a fear she can recognize, even if she is unhappy with it. It does not make it all justified in her eyes, any of the three of them, but it _does_ show Cullen’s words as being rooted in love, and not the distrust and condescension that she had felt. 

“No,” Arravir chokes out somewhat desperately, standing taller, pushing her hair behind her ear and searching out his eyes. Her voice gets stronger. “No. I’m sorry I made you believe that, vhenan --”

Cullen shakes his head, eyes pressed tightly closed in annoyance. “You have still never told me what that mea--”

“It means ‘my heart,’” Arravir blurts out, and something between a laugh and a sob escapes her as she gestures as the impatiently shifting Da’ghilana between them and adds “Not _this_ one.” Slowly, she walks around Ghi’s backside, one hand trailing across him to tell him where she is, and she stops less than a foot in front of Cullen. 

Taking one of his hands in both of hers, both of their eyes wide, she pulls it to her chest and lets his palm rest there. They breathe together in the silence for a moment, his hand moving with the swell of her life -- of her ever-beating _heart_. “This one, vhenan.”

“Vhenan,” Cullen repeats in a voice so quiet, so reverent that it makes her knees buckle. His other hand reaches out as if in disbelief and cups her cheek.

Taking another step closer, she lets go of his hand and leans forward to rest her forehead on his bare chest plate. His hand trails instead to the back of her head and the thick stream of her hair. They stand there, comfortable in the silence for a long pause. Even the sound of Da’ghilana scraping deep grooves into the earth is muffled because she is in his arms again.

It is not that she is seeing him truly for the first time in so many days now -- of course in the midst of the argument that _had_ been him, and she _had_ been herself. It is just that...somehow, right now, she knows it will be okay. This love will be enough.

Placing her palm flat against the cool metal of his armor, she clears her throat and tilts her head back to look up at him. “What I need is for you to respect my ability to choose for myself. And that my history, and my people’s history is one of loss.” Closing her eyes, she feels his hand cover hers again, thumb brushing along her fingers. “So while I often cannot talk about it, I will fight for my people. I am elvhen, and I need you to accept everything that means.”

“I can do that,” Cullen says, voice rough. He clears his throat as well. “Of course I trust your decisions, that you work endlessly for good. But I often worry that you will forget that you are a _person_ , too.”

Arravir opens her eyes and looks at the shadowy warped reflection of her face in his chest plate. She thinks of all the titles -- from slurs to formalities -- that have shaped her world. “Have I ever been just a person? I feel as though I am either more or less than that. I’m knife ear, mage, savage, prophet, martyr, heretic…”

Her voice trails off, and his hand in her hair stills. She meets the tired golden brown of his eyes and speaks with a kind of urgency. “I chose Arravir. I choose elvhen. And I choose you.”

Cullen smiles warmly. “I choose you as well.”

“Good,” Arravir whispers, smiling in return. So much of the heaviness have ebbed away. The tide has grown lower.

Cullen hesitates, trying to find the words. “I am sorry, Arravir, that I let my fear take control when I should have been supporting your decision.”

Da’ghilana huffs loudly beside them, as if sighing his agreement and frustration. Both of them jump slightly, and Arravir’s face transitions from shock to glee to a sudden melancholy again as she remembers how deeply his words _Could you not resist?_ had cut. “It’s...alright. Thank you.” Her voice is shaky. “I am sorry, too.”

He shakes his head slightly, as if to say that she should not be. But she is anyway. His face has a streak of sunlight cutting through from above that splits it diagonally, and it highlights the dark circles beneath his eyes. Cullen seems to not just have the fatigue of these past weeks, but of multiple lifetimes sitting on her shoulders. 

Arravir reaches up to him and lightly runs her thumb over his cheekbone and down to his stubbled jaw. “You look like you have not slept in weeks. Let’s go to bed, vhenan.”

He lets out a disbelieving laugh. “It’s midday!”

“Yes,” she says sternly. “And it’s still unbearably cold, so we are going to my quarters where the ceiling is fully intact.”

Cullen looks as though he is going to argue until he concedes with another laugh. Da’ghilana is not pleased at being left half-brushed, but she fishes another apple from the kitchens out of her pocket that she had kept there for the sole purpose of appeasing him. Together, she and Cullen collect the scattered brushes and hang the bucket by the stall door again. They pull their gloves back on and, when Cullen reaches for his deep red mantle, he pauses, something close to mischief brewing on his face.

“I said that night in the Arbor Wilds that you could wear this on our return journey, didn’t I?” He asks. Without waiting for a reply, he drapes it around her shoulders, making her look remarkably bulky in both her coat and his mantle. The fur fluffs up around her face and tickles part of her exposed neck. Arravir simply pulls it tighter around her.

As they walk back to the main hall, she does not care about all the eyes on her -- and on them -- when she reaches out and takes his arm. He pulls her closer to him, still staring forward, but smiling again -- broadly, almost uncharacteristic in its unbridled Glee.

The sun shines clearer and brighter across the blue canvas of the sky, and she feels, too, that she is made of light. Not just fire intent on destruction. The shadows must quake and shrink back or be burnt away entirely. The ground will be richer to grow because the sun was high and because she had walked there.

  
  
  


* * *

They sit on the edge of her bed side by side and angled towards each other. Slowly, lovingly, they pull each bulky layer, each clanking piece of armor, off the other. It is a silent ritual, with hands trailing along every exposed piece of skin with a touch that is feather light. 

For now, the pieces of Cullen’s armor and her clothing are scattered across the floor, his mantle half hanging off one of the numerous piles of books. She struggles for a moment with some of the buckles on one of the vambraces on his arm, and she is nearly on top of him as she tries to see it from the proper angle.

“You know…” Arravir pauses, finally undoing the clasp and freeing his forearm. “I have been thinking a lot lately about what to do once Corypheus is defeated. I spoke about some of that in the meeting today, but...I have a personal goal as well.”

The mattress shifts upward as Cullen moves to the floor and undoes the laces on one of her boots. Looking up at her earnestly, he asks, “What is it?”

Arravir takes a deep breath, holding the leg out straight for him to pull the boot off then. “I am going to find my father.” 

There is a small tap as Cullen sets the boot down gently, as if trying not to make any noise. He stares at her imploringly. “Do you think…?”

“Do I think he is even still alive?” she asks, and leans back on her forearms, staring at the ceiling for a long moment. “I am fully prepared to find nothing but a grave. But I owe him -- and _myself_ \-- as much to find even that.”

Looking back down, Cullen nods solemnly. 

As he begins unlacing the other boot, she adds, “Denerim will be the most obvious place to start. But my mother’s sister lives...or lived, I don’t know, in Highever, with her wife and son. If they live still, I could always get answers from them.”

“I’ll go with you,” Cullen says. There is a comforting steadiness to his voice.

“Thank you.” Arravir reaches out briefly to stroke his hair that has fallen out of his neat styling, loose curls falling onto his forehead. She holds out her other leg then and lets him remove the boot and place it delicately beside the other. “We could always make a stop in South Reach. See your family.” 

Cullen swiftly moves to sit beside her once again, the mattress sinking softly as he pulls her close. “I think Mia would have my head if we didn’t,” he says with a laugh.

And then, with a joyous hint of nervousness, they are kissing. Half dressed and angled awkwardly with her legs pulled beneath her, they are nothing if not hands and mouth meant only to discover the other again and again and again. And they are laughing, too, for no real reason except the sweet elation of the moment that colors the air around them. 

Arravir shifts so she is sitting on his lap, legs wrapped around his back and chest pressed to chest. She is so glad she had managed to remove his chest piece already so that she can feel the heat of him and the strength of his core.

Cullen slows and lightly traces her jaw before placing two fingers beneath her chin and tilting her head up. And then, his mouth is on her neck, just where he knows she likes, travelling lower. He glances up at her as if asking permission and she moans as her way of assent. As his kisses reach her collarbone, she lets out another low moan that, somehow, embarrassingly, morphs into a yawn.

“Maker,” Cullen says. “Perhaps we _should_ sleep?”

Arravir stifles another yawn, suddenly feeling drained. She presses her forehead to his. “Can we continue this later?”

They kiss again, sweet and chaste. “If I am a lucky man,” he says hand trailing up to the coin still hanging from her neck. “And I am beginning to think that I might be.”

They finish undressing then, with much less ceremony, and slip under the covers of her bed that, for once, does not feel too large.

When they are tangled up under the layers of blankets that are at last dragged up from the floor, he stares at her for a long moment, seeming to contemplate something. Then, he quickly leans forward and presses a kiss to the tip of her pointed ear.

As a way of replying, she shifts closer to him, tucking her head under his chin, and she falls asleep watching the rise and fall of his chest with a small, lazy smile on her face. 

The voices from the Vir’Abelasan sing softly in the back of her mind of a long lost dream: one of a love that impossibly, blissfully endures.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been planning this story for years, and it is so sad but so rewarding to see it come to its end. It is now the longest fic I have completed, and that is a huge achievement to me.
> 
> The responses I have been getting are nothing short of moving (as always I am so grateful to my biggest cheerleader with this fic, Christine FidgetyWriter). Thank you for reading, thank you for engaging, and thank you for your words. It means the world that this story has meant something to others, and that I have done my job conveying its gravity.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Edit: It may seem an obvious and strange omission to not include Flemythal, but I have always been uncomfortable with the lore revelations about the Evanuris so I did not include it. Also, I didn't think it was important for this specific arc of her story. Hope that makes sense!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


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